


A Moment

by extree



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:13:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 42,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4780175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extree/pseuds/extree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were friends, and then there was a moment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Just trying something out. Still working on the other thing, no worries.

Belle had always enjoyed the smell of an extinguished candle, but tonight she was a little sad to blow it out. Maybe that was why she grabbed her phone instead of watching the smoke curl up towards the ceiling like she usually did, and texted him that she missed him already. He’d made vast improvements lately, but he still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the finer subtleties of texting. He wouldn’t pick up on the nuanced difference between _u_ and _you_ , so Belle made sure to add a smiley face with its tongue poking out. Didn’t want him to take it that seriously.

He was getting much faster though; as soon as she plopped back down on her couch, her phone buzzed and rattled on the coffee table. Record speed for a reply to one of her texts. Just a few weeks ago that would have taken him five minutes at least.

_I’ll be across the street, not on a different continent._

Belle grinned and texted back:

_But I can’t talk to you all the way over there you huge dork_

She let the soft worn cushioning of her couch swallow her as she sank down a little further, but she kept her phone in her hand, knowing that it wouldn’t take him too long to come up with snappy comeback or a capitulatory ‘Haha, good night.’ She’d tried to get him to use LOL instead once, but he’d bristled and given her such a look she hadn’t suggested it since.

_You’re doing it right now._

Clever little bugger. Belle huffed and tossed her phone into the corner of the couch. Why was she pouting? He had to wake up early for work tomorrow, and it was half past eleven. Completely reasonable time to call it a night and go home. It was unlike her to pout. She knew that even as she glanced at her phone from the corner of her eye. It was very unlike her, but so what? Pursing her lips, she reached for her phone and replied:

_:(_

There came a knock on the door not half a minute later, which was slightly disconcerting considering the late hour, but when she looked through the peephole, she grinned and bit down on her lip, the worry floating away. She opened the door, and there he stood in his fancy suit and with his loosened tie, no longer in fisheye view. One hand pulled his long hair back from his face and his dark eyes twinkled with amusement as he grinned alternately at his cellphone screen and at her.

“You’re not frowning at all, you liar.”

She tried to, but she couldn’t stop smiling, and that made him laugh, which in turn made her grin, and it was just a hopeless feedback loop of smiles and happiness, really.

“What happened to getting up early?” she asked, leaning against the doorframe and watching him put his phone in his pocket.

“I just remembered I’m in charge. I don’t even have to show up at all.”

Belle snorted, rolled her eyes and grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket to pull him back inside and into a hug with her arms under his suit jacket and around his warm waist.

That was when it happened.

She didn’t know _what_ had happened, but she knew something had. Maybe when she looked up at him just then. Or maybe when she heard him sigh a little laugh in the deeper voice he only ever used when they were alone together. When their bodies collided, he’d draped his arms over her shoulders. Now he grinned down at her as she stared up and tried very hard not to look as shocked as she really was. His cane crossed her back, and she felt the coolness of it through the green fabric of her baby doll dress and the nylon over the back of her thighs. He smelled of her wine and her cinnamon scented candles, his fabric softener and his cologne. He smelled nice. Her eyes fluttered to his lips and suddenly there was a tightening in her chest, and she hoped she hadn’t gasped, but she wasn’t sure.

While she was busy being stunned for no good reason whatsoever, his grin had slowly faded until all that was left was a quiet look of wonder. The very tip of his tongue flicked out from between his lips for just a second.

And that was enough.

Belle stepped back, tearing herself away from the moment, blinking furiously to make up for those long seconds of not blinking at all. She turned away to retrieve her lighter for the candle in its glass holder in the middle of the coffee table and noted not without a little bit of worry that whatever had just happened was not quite done happening. Her face was heating up and getting pink, no doubt, and there was something else. Something more. Worse. Weirder. A desire. A hot pressure between her legs and in the very pit of her stomach that only began to cool when she heard him clear his throat and close the door behind him.

“You put the candle out already? Were you going to bed?”

“Nah, just being thrifty,” she said, watching the darkened wick spark back to life. “Candles don’t grow on trees.”

Did she sound nervous? God, she hoped she didn’t sound nervous.

“That they don’t.”

Had they been closer than usual for that hug? Touching more than they usually did? Larger surface area of contact? She’d hugged him many times before and never felt anything remotely like this. She’d practically thrown herself at him before, flung her arms around his neck and dug her chin into his shoulder, squeezed him tight when he brought her coffee at work or finally finished a book she’d been begging him to read. They hadn’t really… gazed at each other during a hug like that before. Was that what had made her feel closer? Was that why there was fire in her chest where before there was only a harmless glow of comfort and friendly affection? And even if that explained it, it wouldn’t _explain_ it, would it?

While she put away the lighter in her desk drawer and grappled with herself, Belle heard him step closer, following her into the living room.

“What did you have in mind? Another episode?”

She knew on some level that a reply was needed here, but she was strangely mute. She was still in awe of whatever had just happened, and she couldn’t believe… didn’t want to believe that he hadn’t felt it too.

“Um, yeah, sure!” she replied a little too enthusiastically, forcing herself to spin around and beam at him.

He smiled, gave a little nod, and sat down on the couch. Belle chose the arm chair. For some reason, she felt the need to keep herself at a distance. It wasn’t what she wanted, but it felt like it could be a good idea. Proximity was a weird thing tonight. She ought to be careful with it.

“Belle? TV?”

Oh. She hadn’t even turned the TV back on. She’d just thrown herself into the chair and sat there, staring into nothingness. God, she was being much too obvious. Why wasn’t she sitting next to him, anyway? She had to. It was weird not to. Belle stood up and sat down on the other end of the couch, leaving a bit of space between them either way.

Now she just had to turn on the TV.

But she couldn’t.

She felt his careful eyes on her as she sat frozen. She could tell he was reluctant to say anything. So was Belle. She swallowed the fear and grabbed one of her crocheted throw pillows to hug to her chest, then dared to look over. She hadn’t imagined that feeling. He really was looking at her.

“Did we just have a moment?” she blurted, forcing herself to be brave.

There wasn’t much change in his face, and she didn’t know how to feel about it. He just looked a little concerned. Cautious.

“A moment?” he repeated, pausing to flick his tongue out over his lips again. Surely they weren’t _that_ dry. “What do you mean?"

"Earlier. When we hugged."

“A moment,” he muttered quietly, as if tasting the word on his tongue.

“Yeah. You know. A _moment_.”

"You... think there was a moment?"

They had tossed the word back and forth a few times, each adding meaning with looks and texture in their voices, and now it meant something roughly the same for both of them.

"Do _you_ think there was?”

He looked away and frowned, an exaggeration of the look he always had when he was seriously thinking something over. He shifted a bit, sat straighter and stared at his clasped hands between his legs. He looked for all the world like a little schoolboy in trouble.

"I, uh… I wouldn't presume…”

Belle swallowed another cluster of nerves and put on a smile she knew was fainter and more twitchy than she’d aimed for. But it would have to do.

“I just want to know if you thought there was a moment, that’s all.”

He looked at her then, and something changed in his face. A sudden shift that almost startled her, from brittle and distant to serious and honest.

“I think there was something, yes,” he confessed, holding her gaze.

Belle sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down a bit. She felt the heat of that moment on her cheeks again, like an echo. She looked away. The candle in the center of the table had already filled the room again with its thick, sweet cinnamon smell. Next to the candle stood two empty wine glasses, her lipgloss print on one of them.

"Do you think we should kiss?" she asked after a few seconds of silence, looking back at him in time to see his eyes grow just a touch bigger.

“K-Kiss?"

Oh, God. What was she doing?

"You think it's weird. Never mind."

"No no no!” he sputtered, snapping up to sit even straighter than before. “No, I mean, yes, it’s… it’s a strange thought, but not… not unappealing, I just…”

His soft, raspy voice petered out into a murmur, and then into nothing at all. He looked at her so helplessly she felt her insides melt into a puddle of affection. Belle hadn’t seen that look very often. There was that one time he showed up at her door carrying his way too expensive, way too overpowered laptop under his arm and asked for help composing an e-mail to his long-suffering son. (His words. Not hers.) He’d looked like a lost puppy then. This look wasn’t quite like that one, but it was close enough to make her take pity. He was her friend, after all.

“It’s alright,” she said softly, reaching over to put her hand on the back of his. “It’s just me.”

It was electric, that touch, and so was the look he gave her then. Her entire palm tingled, and the feeling traveled through her arm and right up to the base of her skull. She had to take her hand back. It was just too much.

“I just don’t want you to think I’ve been leering at you all this time.”

Belle shook her head. “I wouldn’t think that.”

“Don’t get me wrong, you’re beautiful. So unbelievably beautiful, Belle, and I’d have to be blind not to notice you in that way.”

She felt herself smile effortlessly all of the sudden. She was well on her way to another blush, but she could smile now, and it didn’t feel forced or faltering. He was smiling too. Maybe that was why.

“God, and you’re so much fun. I didn’t even think I _liked_ fun.”

“Dork,” she huffed, rolling her eyes and swatting at the air between them lazily. He reached out and caught her fingers in his hand, a playful gesture that when it lingered, turned into something else. And then he let her go.

“It’s just that I remember… I remember when you kept trying to make conversation in the elevator. And after a few days of your relentless chirping I asked you what you were trying to achieve. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

They worked in the same office building. Different companies, different floors. He rode the elevator all the way to the top every morning, and Belle got off two floors below his. The first time she noticed him, she held the elevator doors for him to catch up. She’d thought that he would get there a little quicker, hadn’t noticed the cane at all, and it was a bit awkward, but she had smiled right through the fierce discouragement of his annoyed scowl. She knew now that he had been embarrassed. Perhaps she already did a bit back then, too.

“You smiled at me, and you said you wanted to be friends.”

“And you laughed at me and told me you made a much better enemy.”

“And then you laughed at _me_.”

“Well I mean, who the bloody hell says something like that?” she cried out, waving her arm wildly through the air.

“Who just announces their intent to befriend someone? Who over the age of six, I ask you.”

“Worked though, didn’t it?” she shot back, folding her arms across her chest and raising an eyebrow.

He slumped a little bit, sighing to fake annoyance, but his smile told a different story.

A silence had crept up on them, and it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, but Belle still felt the need to busy herself a bit. There was still some wine left in the bottle. Enough for two. She wasn’t in the mood to polish it off, but still she grabbed the bottle, letting her thoughts drift as she stared at the dark red liquid pouring down into their wineglasses.

It had been pouring the first time she stayed late at the office, she remembered. She stood lost in front of the huge sliding doors in the lobby, contemplating making a run for it, but then suddenly there he was, standing right next to her, brandishing a huge black umbrella: the man she’d been chatting with in the elevator for weeks. He walked her to her car, letting her shelter under his truly massive umbrella. The size of his car had been no surprise to Belle then - his suits were clearly expensive enough to match - but the fact that he parked in the exact same street certainly was. How they gawped at each other as they got out of their cars in the pouring rain, standing in front of their respective homes.

“Maybe a friend isn’t all I want anymore,” Belle wondered aloud, staring at their filled glasses on the table. He wasn’t taking his either.

“You don’t sound so sure.”

Belle looked at him. His dark eyes were studying her closely, flitting over her face with the erratic movements of two perfectly in sync moths.

“Neither do you.”

She saw the muscles of his neck move as he swallowed. It was a beautiful sight. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

“I’ve just never let myself think about it,” he muttered, loosening his tie a bit more with deft fingers. “I did at first, a bit, but…”

“Yeah?” she chirped, her belly fluttering with what she quickly identified as hope.

“Yeah. Not as a viable option, I just… You know.”

“I thought about you that way too, a bit. At first. I mean, of course I did; you’re the sweetest, most charming, most handsome man I’ve -”

“Oh, come on,” he growled, frowning and waving his hand through the air as if physically deflecting the compliment.

“No, really!” she insisted, reaching out to snap his hand out of the air like he had with hers earlier. “Really, you are. Let me say this.”

He sighed, and she squeezed his hand and let him take it back.

“I know I’m not the first person to call you handsome, so you know I’m not just saying that. And you _are_ sweet. That layer of big scary grumpy CEO is so, so thin if you just bother to look closer. A few times I saw you talking to some beautiful sophisticated woman and I’d think _finally_ , someone noticed him.”

“You thought I was dating?” he muttered, his voice deep with mocking disbelief.

“Why not?” Belle sighed, letting her head fall back against the backrest of the couch in exaggerated despair. “I never thought a man as gorgeous as you at the head of a multimillion dollar company could have such a low opinion of himself before I met you.”

“Used to be much worse about that, you know.”

He gazed at her, one corner of his mouth pulling up into a faint, crooked smile. Belle wanted to sing his praises some more, but he looked away again, staring silently ahead with that half smile still on his face.

“Is now the right time to confess that I never liked Gaston?”

Belle snorted a little laugh and replied, “That’s not exactly news to me.”

“Oh?”

She nodded.

“Sorry about that. I tried to pretend.”

“You really did. It was cute. I appreciated it.”

“It wasn’t because I was jealous. I could just tell he wasn’t… worthy.”

Belle raised her brow in surprise and stared at his striking profile. He noticed her look from the corner of his eye and hurriedly added, “Not that I think I am.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” she mused. “Being worthy of someone or not.”

“Well, I suppose in this case, it simply means he was a complete pillock, and you deserve better. Again, not saying that _I_ am.”

Belle smiled and offered a shrug.

“You are, though. Better than Gaston, in literally every way. I just don’t think romance works like that. With worthiness.”

“Oh. Well.”

For the second time, their conversation fizzled out. Seconds were stretched and sticky, lingering instead of passing. Seemed like minutes before the world began to move again.

“Maybe it’s just the wine,” he said as he reached for his glass, not sounding very convinced.

How odd it was to know exactly what that nebulous _it_ meant, and yet not at all.

“We’ve knocked back more than that and we never had a moment then.”

“That’s true,” he admitted, interrupting a sip to reply. “I didn’t really think it was the wine. I just wanted to give you… I don’t know.”

“An out?”

He smiled and nodded, just once, and Belle smiled warmly.

“I don’t want an out. I want to know what’s different tonight. I just can’t figure it out. Something has to be different.”

They’d done this so often. He would bring a scandalously expensive bottle of wine, and she would pick a DVD or a show that just happened to be on that they could mock mercilessly together, and it was the best part of her week. More often than not they would get bored and just ended up talking instead of watching. Every weekend, now. Every single weekend for months, and they’d known each other for almost a year now. What could possibly have changed?

“Time, I suppose,” came his answer at last.

It was one of those things she sort of understood, but only if she didn’t think about it too hard. If she wasn’t different, and he wasn’t different, and up wasn’t down and hot wasn’t cold, then what else could it be but time?

“If we kissed,” she started, pausing to lick away the dryness from her lips, “what’s the worst that could happen?”

“Awkward moment.”

“But that’s all, right?”

“I think so.”

“It wouldn’t ruin anything, right?”

“I don’t think it would.”

“Cause you took bloody months to tell me your first name, and I really don’t want to go back to square one of the most important friendship in my life.”

She’d aimed for a playful sort of mock anger, but even to her own ears, she sounded fraught with worry instead. That was probably why he was smiling so kindly.

“You never asked.”

“Me not asking is not as weird as you not telling!”

He laughed quietly, looking back down at his hands and nodding meekly as if to signal defeat. Belle looked at them too and found herself wondering how they would feel around her waist, or in her hair.

It wasn’t that she wasn’t scared. She was, truly. But she was nothing if not courageous. Whether that was a good thing or not, well, that usually became clear after the fact. After the fog lifted and revealed either glory or rubble.

Feeling her heart beat a little faster in her chest, Belle scooted just an inch closer and asked, “Do you want to try?”

He bit his lip, distracting her from his eyes.

“It’s strange… I say no often. It’s how I got where I am in life, and I’m very good at it. But I don’t think I could ever say no to you.”

He spoke slowly, his voice deep and textured, resonating with something in her belly. It made her want to move closer. _She_ wanted to try. Every inch of her, every cell in her body.

“Kind of makes me sound creepy,” Belle remarked in a conspiratorial tone, quirking an eyebrow. “Like I’m some sort of evil siren.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he laughed quietly. “I don’t even know why I said it out loud.”

Her heart was still thudding away. Her fingers were itching to touch his soft hair.

“Do you want to say no?”

They held each other’s gaze, and Belle held her breath. Time was still dilating between them, but space was doing something different. She had ended up closer somehow. One scoot more and their thighs would touch.

“I want to try.”

Belle moved closer, carefully as if not to startle him, though that was a ridiculous thought. She didn’t know what to do with her hands, but that wasn’t the important part, was it? Breathing slow despite her heart rate, Belle broke their stare to close her eyes and softly pushed her nose against his cheek. That inner heat from before flared up again, and she knew for sure now. She knew that they had to try. Her hands chose his shoulders for a perch. His found her upper arms and held them. His hands were hot. His breath against her cheek too. He slowly turned his head so that his nose brushed hers. Belle heard herself breathe like a bird through parted lips and knew her chest was heaving, though she made very little sound.

When her lips touched the corner of his mouth, she kissed it, and something inside of her collapsed with a frightening suddenness.

Everything went faster after that. His hand on her cheek, his lips covering hers, her hand on his neck, his hair tickling her fingers, and the air simply disappearing from her lungs to make her feel completely and utterly empty in the best possible way. It felt so good, _so_ good it made her stupid eyes tear up stupidly like the stupid overemotional wreck she was, and she broke the kiss abruptly to wipe away the tears before he felt them.

His eyes were so big and his cheeks so red. He looked worried, and he looked thoroughly kissed.

“Are you alright?” he asked, a hint of panic in his voice. “Was that bad?”

“It was really good,” Belle laughed softly with a sniffle, and she watched the lines creasing his forehead melt away in relief.

Kissing him and finding it perfect had been like falling in a dream. A jolt to her heart and the very core of her at the discovery that they might have something more than they thought they did. And what they thought they had was so much already.

“Good,” he rasped.

She put her hand on his stubbly jaw and pulled him into another kiss that half swallowed that throaty _‘good’_ of his. She’d caught his lip between hers. Their kiss was wet now, and the feeling wasn’t helping the intense heat radiating out from just behind her ribs much at all. The only sound in the room was the sound of their lips for a while, until Belle added the slide of her hands over the fabric of his trousers as she grabbed his thighs for proper purchase and dug her fingers in the hard flesh. His hands came to cover hers and slid them a bit further down towards his knees, and on instinct, Belle broke the kiss and glanced down.

Oh.

“Oh. You’re…”

Hard. And that was kind of unnecessary to say out loud, wasn’t it? Eyes wide, Belle forced herself to look back up and meet his gaze, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking over her shoulder, face red as could be.

“Sorry,” he huffed in an embarrassed little laugh.

When he loosened his grip on her hands, Belle moved them to his cheeks instead. If only he knew what she’d felt when they hugged earlier. If only he knew what she wanted to tumble into headfirst now, much too soon.

“I feel the same way. Don't be embarrassed,” she cooed. “Just ignore it.”

“That’s some fantastic advice, there! Where were you when I was a teenager?”

Grinning, she patted his cheeks a couple of times, then drew her legs up on the couch to get comfortable.

“Hm. I don't think my parents even knew each other yet back in the eighteen seventies.”

His jaw dropped a bit, and Belle giggled in victory. For once, he wasn’t quick enough to cover up his initial reaction. He knew it was too late, but he plastered on a quick scowl anyway.

“Oh, that’s nice, that,” he complained, his voice growly and deep. “Thank you so much, Belle.”

“I thought an insult might help!” she mewled as innocently as she could, glancing back down at the bulge in his trousers. “I didn’t mean it! Is it helping?”

He stole the cushion from her and covered his lap with it, declaring, “You looking at it certainly isn’t!”

“Well I’m sorry, but can you blame me for being flattered?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be,” he teased. “Maybe I just really love the smell of cinnamon candles. Don't take it so personally.”

Trying hard to keep a straight face, Belle wiggled an eyebrow and teased, “How _should_ I take it?”

“Oh please!” he blurted, bursting out into infectious laughter.

Giggling, Belle threw him another cushion, quietening only when the reality of what had just happened between them made itself known to her by the sight of the transparent glimmer of her lipgloss on his mouth catching the dim light of her living room.

They’d kissed. They’d kissed, and the world was still standing.

“What do we do now?” she asked, suddenly in awe of it all.

He was all laughed out, and oh so handsome there slumped on her couch with his tie loose and his hair messy and a button on his shirt undone. His lips had stopped smiling, but his eyes hadn’t.

“Now we watch another episode, finish that wine, and take our time to figure this out.”

Belle let her lips bloom into a smile. Yeah. They’d be alright.

“That sounds good.”

“Although Are You Being Served has been a terrible influence on you so far,” he said as he reached for his wine on the table. “Never known you to go for the double entendres before.”

Smirking to herself, Belle grabbed the remote in one hand and her own glass in the other. “It’s not like it’s _hard_.”

His tortured groan was almost as satisfying as their heart-stopping kiss.

“That one was sloppy,” he laughed. “Just turn the bloody TV on and come here.”

Careful not to spill his fancy wine on her beloved couch, Belle let him gather her to him. He draped his heavy arm over her shoulders, making her feel even warmer than she had felt on the inside all night. The TV blared the familiar theme song, and her heart sang when he leaned his head against hers. They’d had a moment, and it was alright to have more.


	2. A Sleepover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sharing a bed with a friend in need.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really tried to keep this a one-shot. I really, really tried. :')
> 
> The timeline's gonna be a bit weird in this one. I'm going to be jumping back and forth, alternating every chapter. Everything will be centered around the first chapter (the original one-shot), so the next chapter will be set after the kiss. The one after that will be set before the kiss again, and so on.
> 
> Thank you for reading. <3

“Are you sure this is alright?” asked Belle, pulling up her duffel bag from the elevator floor.

“Yes!”

He seemed genuinely fraught as he ushered her out of the elevator and into his penthouse apartment. Shivering but getting warmer by the second, Belle steeled herself for the view she was yet to get used to. The southern edge of the city lay spread out in the darkness beyond the windows, yellow lights dotting curving roads, and buildings shrinking and thinning out into suburbs further on. On the other side of the building, the view would not have been quite as transfixing. Just a few apartment buildings, like hers. They were old and squat in comparison, less shiny and certainly not as expensive as his. Hers was not the shabbiest home, and his was not the fanciest - but she only knew that because he’d assured her it wasn’t.

Always smelled a bit lemony in here.

“I wish you’d told me yesterday, Belle. What’s the bloody point in keeping me around if you don’t make any use of me?”

Belle sighed, but smiled at him. He was still carrying on his struggle to understand the concept of friendship, then, talking about himself as if he were a novelty pizza cutter and she needed to free up some room in the kitchen drawers.

“It really wasn’t that bad,” she tried, knowing in her heart that it was pointless. A quick look over her shoulder at his face with its deep lines of concern confirmed her hunch.

“You were taking ice cold showers!” he argued. “In February! In an unheated flat!”

Belle had only called to tell him they had better have their Saturday movie night at his place that week, since her heating had died and her apartment had turned into a giant refrigerator. She was certainly not going to pretend she didn’t have the slightest inkling that she might be standing on his heated floors and admiring his view not long after hanging up the phone - but she also knew she _could_ have managed another night in the biting cold.

Really, she could have. Reading with frozen fingers was an absolute nightmare, but that was what television was for.

“I only took one ice cold shower this morning and all it did was wake me up nicely! I wasn’t going to freeze to death.”

“And I can’t believe you were wearing _that_ when I came to get you,” he continued, gesturing towards her with a stiff hand.

Belle looked down and wondered whether he meant the shoes, or the skirt, or the blouse - just another normal work outfit like all of the others.

“How have your legs not turned into popsicles?”

The skirt, then. Rolling her eyes, Belle explained, “I just got home when I called you. I went straight to the shops after work. I was going to change into something warm right after. And I’ve got loads of blankets, you know.”

He grumbled his disapproval, shaking his head at her. 

“You’re still shivering. I’m making you tea.”

She let him wander off into the kitchen area and gave what was to be her bed for the night a long, hard look. His big, uncomfortable, slippery black leather couch was dark and uninviting, but it was not situated in a walk-in freezer and the view was great, so there was that.

“I can run back to mine and get some sheets to put on here,” she said, pushing her fingers down into the padding experimentally. She leaned against the back of it, testing it that way. Not any better.

“You’re not sleeping there,” he replied, raising his voice a touch to compete with the hollow banging of his surprisingly old-fashioned copper kettle as it slipped from his fingers and into the sink in his hurry to get it on the stove. Belle cringed, her ears ringing.

“I thought you didn’t have a spare room?”

“I don’t. I’m taking the sofa. You’re sleeping in my bed. I’ve already changed the sheets.”

Her eyes huge in equal parts horror and disbelief, Belle gasped a dramatic “No!” that bounced off the floors and the bare walls and right back into her ears, along with the sound of the kettle burbling pleasantly as he filled it with water.

“Oh, yes.”

“No, come on! I’m not gonna take your bed!”

“And I’m not letting you doss down on that nightmare of a sofa,” he insisted, shooting her a stern look.

“But -”

“Hot chocolate might be better,” he muttered to himself, pausing in indecision just before he opened a cupboard. “That’ll take longer, though. No — tea. Before you freeze.”

“I’m not going to freeze, alright?” she said, softer now that he sounded so quietly determined.

“Indeed you’re not. And you’re not sleeping on the sofa.”

Belle shrugged out of her peacoat with a tired sigh, draped it over the back of the sofa and joined him in the kitchen. The apartment being mostly open plan, Belle could sit herself on his dining table - she hoisted herself up with a little sound of effort - and still watch him. She rubbed her cold hands on her thighs, seeking friction to heat them.

His kitchen was all black marble countertops, sleek dark wood and huge stainless steel appliances. She couldn’t see any handles on anything, and as far as she could make out, there was no way to tell which way everything opened. But he knew his way around. She watched as he rummaged through the cupboard above the sink, less frantic and more purposeful now that the kettle was on the stove and there was nothing left to do but wait for the water to boil.

“Please just let me sleep on the sofa. I’ll let you make me gallons of tea, or hot chocolate, or whatever you like, but I’m not taking your bed. Your sofa’s huge and I’m… not.”

“Be that as it may, that thing is hard as a bloody rock. It’s not for sleeping.”

“Then why would I let _you_ sleep on it?”

Belle heard the pleasant sound of sugar cubes clattering into cups. He turned just to glare at her with his hands on his hips like an exasperated parent. Undeterred, she raised a single eyebrow in challenge and pursed her lips. Four great strides later, with his hand on the island counter for support for two of them, he stood before her to snatch her duffel bag from her chilled hands, fingers suddenly slack in surprise. He slung it over his shoulder.

“Look, just come and have a look at this,” he said, putting his free hand on her arm to help nudge her off the table and towards what she assumed was the bedroom door, all the way on the other side of the apartment.

He opened it to reveal a room as sleek and squeaky clean as his kitchen. A glass sliding door that led to a balcony was cracked open, making the curtains dance in the icy breeze. Belle wrapped her arms around herself. Gold cursed or apologized under his breath - she wasn’t sure which - and limped across the room to push the door shut again. As the sudden chill passed and left goosebumps in its wake, Belle took it all in with huge eyes.

In the center of the room stood a bed in which a woman with her stature could probably get lost during the night. The sheets were a dark charcoal grey and silky looking. The pillows were generous and fluffy, all ready to swallow her sleeping head whole. Despite Belle’s best efforts, her mouth fell open. The bed looked exactly like sleep - if sleep had a physical form.

“Tell me you don’t want to sleep in _that_ ,” he dared her, so satisfied with her reaction that the worry on his face had made place for a smirk.

“It’s.… big.”

“And it’s calling your name,” he lilted in the playful, singsong tone that lay a few rungs higher up the scale than his regular voice. The first time she’d heard it, she had been startled and even a little disquieted. Now, even though she hadn’t quite figured out the pattern yet, it didn’t even make her blink anymore.

“You can fit five people in there!” she cried out, clumsily thrusting out her arm towards the bed as if anyone could possibly have missed it.

“Mm. Six if you’re feeling greedy, but any more than that and it does get frightfully hot.”

Belle rolled her eyes and gave him a playful shove of the elbow.

“I _mean_ ,” she began, pointing at the bed again, “we could _both_ sleep in the bed, you dork.” His smug smirk disappeared to leave his face completely blank. Belle felt suddenly self-conscious. “I mean, there’s enough room. Right?”

“I just wish you’d let me get you a hotel room for the week, that’s all,” he blurted, putting on a rushed frown to replace that telling look of blankness. “I can’t subject you to the sofa with a clear conscience.”

“A hotel room?” Belle repeated, screwing up her face. “Why would I… I… And even if I did, I wouldn’t let _you_ pay for -”

“Yes! I know!” he cut in, depositing her duffel bag on the floor next to the door. Belle didn’t blame him for interrupting; they’d had a dozen variations on this conversation before, and she’d made her point some time ago. “But what if you considered it an extremely early birthday gift?”

“Then I’d be lying to myself,” she replied with a shrug. “You’d just get me another gift on my actual birthday in a few months and act like this didn’t happen.”

He was silent now, lips pressed into a long line to disguise a fond smile. Belle felt the sight warm her, pleased that he still liked to let her have her little victories. They had a silent agreement to take turns rolling over for each other, and it had worked out pretty well so far.

“Either I take the sofa, or we both take the bed,” she decided. “Just for the night. Tomorrow I’ll figure something out for the rest of the week. Maybe Ruby, or someone at work. Or if he’s stopped hating me completely, Gaston might -”

“Oh dear _God_ , alright, I yield!” he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air.

Belle tried to subdue a smug grin. Two birds in one stone, there. That was the closest she’d ever gotten to having him admit that he didn’t much like her ex-boyfriend.

“Alright what? Do I get the sofa or are we sleeping in the bed?”

“Option number two,” he grumbled, turning on his heels to head back into the living room.

In the kitchen, the copper kettle started whistling

“I’m not gonna kick you in my sleep or anything,” she promised, closing the bedroom door behind her. “You sure you don’t mind sharing a bed?”

There was a beat of silence that Belle felt was very unnecessary and unusual. He turned off the stove and let the kettle’s whistle die off, shaking his head.

“I don’t mind at all,” he sighed, turning around to lean against the counter. He gave her a tired smile. “I’m sorry for fussing. It’s just that I’ve been cold before. Freezing, I mean. I know what that’s like, and I may have been projecting a little bit, there.”

Belle sighed in relief and returned his smile with an understanding nod. She felt the last bits of fight flow out of her system, evaporating into nothing and making her feel lighter.

“You were right, though. I could have told you sooner. Let you help.”

Maybe she still needed to get the hang of this friendship thing too.

“Did you even sleep?” he asked knowingly, pouring hot water into their cups.

“A little. But not really. I thought I’d be alright with just the comforter and the blankets and everything, but it, uh, it wasn’t alright.”

She mumbled that last bit of her admission with an embarrassed smile, and he very kindly forwent the _I-told-you-so_ to hand her her tea in silence instead. Belle’s fingers were no longer the ten sticks of ice they were before, but still the ceramic warmth was a welcome sensation.

“So does the heating die in this place sometimes?” she asked, following him to his maligned sofa. (It wasn’t that bad for sitting, really.)

“What?” He pushed his eyebrows together as he took a tiny sip. He put his cup on the coffee table, nudging it gently further away from the edge. “Oh, because I said I knew what it was like?”

Belle nodded and pulled her legs up on the sofa, kicking off her fluffy boots in the process.

“No,” he said, crossing his bad leg over the other and hooking his elbows over the backrest. “That wasn’t here.”

Belle began to smile at the way his eyes had locked on to an invisible point in the distance, far beyond the edge of town and perhaps even back in time. She twisted to face him better, legs curled up under her and arm propped up on the back of the sofa. Tea was lovely and all. But Belle knew a face with a story when she saw one, and that look spoke volumes.

“Then where?” she asked, pleased when his mouth began to curl slowly up into a dreamy smile.

“When I was ten, I got my bike stolen. My great aunt saved up for it for ages, and I loved that thing to bits. My own fault, really. I had a chain for it and everything, but I forgot. Just the once.”

“I’m picturing a red bike.” And a small, scrawny little boy with keen brown eyes and a mop of brown hair.

He grinned. “Green. Metallic green.”

“That works, too.”

“I thought my great aunt was going to be furious with me, so I packed a knapsack and ran.”

“A _knapsack_?” she gasped, laughing.

“Not on a stick!”

In a deep, thoughtful voice, he told her of the improvised bed of pine needles in the forest, the useless blanket he’d nevertheless thought to stuff into his bag, and the ominous owl somewhere unseen in the treetops keeping him awake and conscious until his great aunt and a few concerned neighbors came and found him, scooped him up and carried him home. He didn’t get in trouble.

Belle was still picturing pine needles sticking to plaid and little hands around a red mug filled to the brim with hot chocolate when his voice calling her name reached her through the always strange and irresistible haze that was someone else’s nostalgia. Blinking, she looked up from her still steaming cup of tea.

“Hm?”

“You’re really not going to let me get you a hotel room, are you?” he asked, his mouth half tugged up into a resigned smile.

“Nope. But I’m not going to stick around all week, I promise. I’ll find another solution and get out of your hair as soon as I can.”

“Belle, stop,” he groaned, shaking his head with a look of horror at the mere suggestion. “I didn’t mean it like that. You can stay as long as you like. I just know you like to have your own space, that’s all.” 

“I could get an inflatable mattress,” she shrugged.

“I don’t mind sharing the bed, if you don’t,” he said. Then he lowered his voice, knitted his eyebrows together and looked down at his knees. “But there’s another option.”

“Another option?”

“I… I have a house.” The words sounded heavy as he said them, like they had to be dragged up and out of his chest one by one. “It’s about a twenty minute drive from here. I go there once a week, just to make sure everything’s in order. It’s perfectly fine, I just haven’t spent a night there in… God, donkey’s years.”

“A house? You have an _entire_ house you never told me about?”

Belle couldn’t help the incredulous tone to her voice. She felt as if he’d actually dropped the bloody house right on top of her head with the way that had just come out of nowhere. He looked apologetic about it, at least; already his puppy eyes were magicking away the strange pang of insult in the pit of her belly.

“Yes. And you’re welcome to stay there as long as you like. There’s coffee and tea, but the fridge and the freezer are empty, so we’d have to stock up first.”

“I wouldn’t want to impose,” she said quietly.

“It’s an empty house. There’s no-one to bother. Except maybe the ghosts.”

A soft little laugh escaped her, making the skin around her eyes crinkle.

“There’s central heating,” he continued in his attempt to coax her over the line, slowly raising his brow. “And a room that I call a study, but some might call it a library.”

Belle pressed her lips together tight and narrowed her eyes. That did sound good, but she knew he was pushing her buttons, now. She didn’t mind, though. A house sounded lovely, and above all - Belle was curious now. Because this apartment, it didn’t mean anything. There was barely anything in it, and it wasn’t very him at all. And she couldn’t help but wonder…

That house…

“Can I snoop around a bit?”

Might as well be upfront about that, she figured. Judging from his amused smile, they seemed to be in agreement, there.

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

“Are they nice ghosts?”

“Each and every one of them is an absolute delight. Even the murderous ones.”

“And you’re sure you wouldn’t mind?”

“Not at all. I’d be relieved, in fact.”

“Then… yeah! Thank you!”

He grinned victoriously and reached for his forgotten tea. “I could pick you up some time after work tomorrow,” he said. “Give you some time to pack first.”

“On one condition.”

He stopped mid-sip, the cup obscuring half a baffled look. Belle wrestled down a grin.

“Tell me why you own a house no-one lives in. And why you only told me after you were sure I wasn’t going to take you up on your other offer.”

He sighed, but he couldn’t hide his smile.

“I own a house no-one lives in because I didn’t want to sell it after I moved. And I would have preferred to pay for a hotel room because I rightly suspected you would make a thing of it when I told you about the house.”

There was a certain quality to his voice that let her know that this was a dead end. No need to press further. Story time was over, it seemed, and there was just enough truth in what he had given her, and just enough mystery too. Her questions had gone answered, to some extent, and in other ways not at all. It was typical, and familiar, and Belle didn’t mind so much. That was just the way she knew him.

“Is it the ghosts?” she asked, offering a kind smile which he returned with a little nod.

“Sort of.”

…

Curled up in the lemony scented darkness of his room, his comforter drawn over her shoulders and her head sunk deliciously deep in his pillow, Belle uttered a soft, “Hey.”

“Hey,” he parroted. His voice was gravelly now, softer and deeper. Belle smiled.

“This is like that time you passed out in my living room.”

“As if you remember that night,” he huffed.

“I remember _that_ bit!”

“Not correctly, you don’t. I didn’t pass out; I went to sleep very drunk on your sofa. I’ll have you know there’s a difference.”

“Sure,” she laughed. “That was a totally conscious decision on your part. Definitely.”

She wouldn’t tell him about the drool just yet. She’d keep that ace up her sleeve a little while longer.

“And we weren’t sharing your sofa then. You slept in your room.”

“Yeah, but your bed’s probably bigger than the distance between my sofa and my bed,” she argued, not so sure if she was really exaggerating that terribly.

“For what it’s worth, the furniture came with the flat,” he mumbled, sounding a little embarrassed.

“I figured.”

She couldn’t wait to see that house of his and see just how many pieces of the puzzle she would find, there. Pieces she knew she’d never find here. She pictured colored glass, warm woods and velvet upholstering, red or maybe green.

And a smaller bed.

“Good night, Belle.”

Belle’s inner tween was a little disappointed that he was going to sleep so soon. Her lower lip pushing out just a bit, she responded with a quiet little, “Yeah, good night.”

But it wasn’t as if they were ever going to paint each other’s nails and gossip about boys, was it? She was being silly. Writhing to settle in her warm little nest in the sea of dark sheets, Belle clenched her eyes firmly shut and waited for sleep.

But it would not come. She cracked her eyes open. They were adjusted to the dark by now, and she could see him lying on his side and facing the curtained window, his shoulders moving slowly, steadily as he breathed.

It was too quiet up here, so high above traffic.

“You asleep yet?” she whispered.

A deep, resonant laugh told her he wasn’t. “Very tempted to drag you onto the sofa after all right now.”

She grinned.

“It’s kind of huge, you know.”

“Oh, stop going on about the bed already. Give over.”

“No! I mean, it’s kind of huge that you have a house and I didn’t know about it.”

“I know,” he admitted after a second of silence. The sheets rustled as he shifted to lie on his stomach. “I knew you’d feel that way.”

“It doesn’t seem like it’s one of your weird rich person things either. You know, like offering to put me up in a hotel for a week.”

“Tell me, chatterbox, are you gonna keep chirping all night long?” he asked, deftly ignoring her last, half-hearted attempt to get him to talk about the house after all. “Because I do have to get up at six.”

“Six?” she peeped. Belle felt her stomach churn at the mere thought of being screamed awake by his alarm clock so soon before the sun would even begin to creep over the horizon.

“I’ll be quiet. You won’t even know I’m gone. The door locks itself so you won’t have to worry about that.”

She curled up a little tighter and tried to find his eyes. It took a while, but finally she saw two little glimmers shifting slightly in the dark.

“But… I thought we could head into work together.”

“In the same car?”

“Well, yeah.”

“I suppose I could stay late and get a taxi back,” he mused, his voice deep and thoughtful. “Give you my keys so you don’t have to sit around and wait in your freezing flat. We could take my car if you don’t mind driving it back.”

Belle frowned. “You wanna stay late, too? But you’re in charge! Who’s gonna fire you if you don’t?”

“Belle, I have to get the work done some time, haven’t I?”

“Yeah, okay, but still,” she mumbled, feeling herself begin to pout.

He fell onto his back with a sigh, the sheets whispering around him as he settled. Belle could see his eyes were still open, blinking up at the ceiling.

“I’ll set the alarm for seven thirty if you bring me coffee when you get off work,” he offered, his head falling to the side to peer at her. “From that nice place, not the expensive one. And take your time so I might actually have a small chance of finishing anything at all tomorrow.”

“Deal!” she blurted.

“Deal,” he growled, reaching for his iPhone on the night stand. “Seven thirty, then.”

The light of his phone lit up his face, cutting angular shadows in bright blue light. She’d never seen his eyes darker.

“You’re the best,” she said. He tore his eyes away from his phone to look at her, and Belle smiled. “Really. Thank you. You’re a good friend.”

“I suppose you’re welcome,” he replied, a hidden smile twitching at the corner of his mouth.

Then the light died again, and she could see nothing but black. Blinking uselessly, Belle listened for the sound of his phone dropping to the night table. Then the rustling of the sheets.

“Good night, Belle.”

His voice sounded closer now. He was lying on his side again, but facing her. And even though she tried - she _really_ did - to flip that switch in her whirring brain and let the poor man sleep, something playful and bouncy inside of her just flat out refused to settle down.

“Wait. There’s something I need to know.”

“Oh my God,” he moaned. “What is it?”

Trying not to giggle, Belle asked, “Just in case I’m a sleep cuddler, d’you wanna be the big spoon or the little spoon?”

In complete winter darkness, Belle only knew he’d slid his head under his pillow because his tortured groan sounded so muffled. Belle laughed a satisfying belly laugh, rolling onto her back to spread her arms and legs experimentally. God, that bed really was huge. She wondered if she could stretch her arms all the way out and still not -

“Hey! Watch it!”

The very tips of her fingers hit something hard and warm under the covers, and she swiftly pulled her hand back.

“Oops! Sorry. That was your arm, right?”

“What else would it be?” he asked as he surfaced from underneath his pillow. “I mean, I’m flattered, but -”

“What? Oh my God, shut up!” Belle sputtered, giggling and grabbing his pillow from him to wallop him over the head with it as he laughed deeply and deliciously. 

Once he’d stolen back his pillow, Belle heard the sound of his iPhone sliding over wood again, and then came the familiar eerie blue glow. Belle looked over. His pale blue face was grinning at the screen, squinting against the glare, a lone tear of laughter making its way down his face.

“What are you doing?” she asked, twisting to lie on her stomach and sliding her hands into that precious cool spot under her pillow.

“Being realistic, Belle, that’s what,” he sighed, finger sliding on the screen. “There. Eight thirty.”


	3. A Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A conversation about a conversation in an empty house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love you guys.

Closing the door of the old house full of polished wood and warm colors behind her, Belle felt a little less lonely already. It really was some terrible timing on his part, leaving her on her own and flying off just to go and be important on the other side of the ocean, only days after she realized she could now play with his hair whenever she wanted. Now he and his soft hair were in Frankfurt, and Belle felt a little bit pathetic for pining.

The afternoon sun filtered strangely nostalgic through the windows, tiny specks of dust dancing in the golden light. Where would all that dust end up, Belle wondered? There was none on the banister, or on the telephone on its little table by the door that led to the library. With a little sigh, she hung her coat away on the hatstand, right next to the wool blend overcoat that he kept there for some reason. She couldn’t resist brushing the back of her fingers over the shoulder, the fabric both soft and a little bit scratchy to the touch. No dust on that either.

An offer to come by and clean on the day he normally would have had turned into an invitation to stay over for the entire week, and Belle couldn’t think of a single reason to decline. She’d stuffed her duffel bag after work and came straight over, excited, because she’d missed the place. She liked her apartment just fine, but here she had a garden to drink her coffee in, and a bathtub to soak and read in until she turned into a human prune. Here there were no immediate neighbors to bother, and there was no constant distant din of traffic for a soundtrack. It was an old house that liked to settle every so often when everything was quiet, but the sudden creak of wood - like right then as she walked slowly further down the hall - or the knocking of pipes in the middle of the night didn’t startle her anymore after those cold evenings in February spent curled up under a plaid blanket in his living room. If there were ghosts, which she knew there weren’t (probably), they kept to themselves and left her be.

Belle knew exactly which part of the house she wanted to check up on first.

The library was a small room in the front of the house with an inviting old red velvety arm chair underneath a picture window. Rows of bookcases lined the walls. On a desk pushed up against the wall opposite the door lay a pile of books Belle had meant to put away all those months ago, untouched ever since by the looks of it, except perhaps to dust. The view from the window was different, though. No beautiful glittering carpet of snow in this warmer weather.

The state she had found the library in that very first time had baffled her. It just seemed so unlikely that in a room with so many books, nothing had even been _accidentally_ organized. No alphabetization, no chronological order, genres weren’t grouped together, and there were books by the same author in different bookcases entirely. Watching the snow twirl, safe and warm from behind the window that first night in February, Belle had called and begged him to let her have at it. She’d gotten started, but she wasn’t nearly finished when she got the call that the heating in her apartment had been fixed. She could definitely keep busy this week, then, Belle thought to herself with a little smile as she closed the library door behind her. Sliding a single finger over wood of the staircase banister in passing, she moved on.

The pile of books on the desk back in the library was not the only thing that hinted at a curious temporal hiccup. His little doodle of a ghost on the notepad next to the rotary phone in the hallway was still there, the ink unfaded, the paper unyellowed. In the living room, Belle noticed the plaid blanket that had served her so well, folded up neatly over the back of the sofa. She wouldn’t be needing that now that it was not-quite-yet-summer, but she liked the look of it there. The big bag of M&Ms on the kitchen counter that caught her eye as she moved on from the living room, that was _definitely_ new. She smiled at the sight of it, a smile that only got bigger when she opened the refrigerator and found a bottle of champagne standing tall and proud in the middle of a sea of white.

“You’re ridiculous,” she said softly, grinning wide. She wished she could call and tell him just that, but she had no idea what time it was in Frankfurt, and he did say he’d call her when he could.

Belle closed the refrigerator with one last utterly tempted look, and decided that she would just have to wait. There were plenty of things with which to distract herself from the urge to hear his voice, like that nonsensical library of his that needed organizing, or maybe figuring out what to order for dinner. For now, there was that considerate bag of M&Ms to get started on. She took the bag with her and kept it on the desk in the library as she returned to the task she’d started back in February.

His collection consisted mostly of classic novels, historical non-fiction, and art and photography books, all spread out with neither rhyme nor reason over every single bookcase in the room. There was little else to do but to alphabetize, and the task was distracting enough, for a short while at least. But a dozen or so books deep into what turned out to be a process more tedious than she remembered it, the loud crunching of sugary shells and chocolatey peanuts reverberating in Belle’s skull stopped being enough to drown out the voice in the back of her head. A voice that nagged her to call him.

With that realization, she let herself drop down limp into the armchair under the window, the late afternoon sun pouring in over her shoulder. Sighing perhaps a little too dramatically, Belle put her hand over her phone, tucked safely away in her skirt pocket.

It was still true; she did feel a little less lonely in here. But that didn’t make her miss him any less. There was that - there was missing him, his company, his dumb jokes, her _friend_. And then there was something else. Something as new to the house as that bag of candy, but this was something she’d brought with her. She wasn’t sure whether it was exciting her, or making her anxious. Maybe it was a little bit of both. It felt like she was stalled in front of a green light, her foot not even anywhere near the gas. No cacophony of blaring horns, no angry shouts. Just her, an empty road, and a green light. And him. Not there, but all the way over the ocean.

_Stop pining._

Belle reached behind her for the book she’d left on the windowsill, a heavy tome bound in a deep blue cloth, adorned with elegant silvery letters. The paper was thin and yellowing at the edges. Inside were myriad wood block print illustrations of various saints, and accompanying text in French. She could barely understand a word of it, but she enjoyed trying, and it stilled that little voice for a short while.

A minute or ten. And then she slammed the book shut with a satisfying whoosh and a clap and put it back on the windowsill. She’d sort it later, she told herself as she stood up and wandered out of the library. Then Belle began to climb the staircase in search of some more distraction, or an excuse to let herself wallow. Either was just fine by her, but not _this_. Not this constant background itch to grab her phone and leave him meaningless messages, empty words.

There. His bedroom. He hadn’t slept there in a long time, that was what he’d told her. The floors were creakier in here, and the drawers (yes, she had snooped to her heart’s content) were difficult and stiff. There was another bedroom - his son’s, before he’d moved out so suddenly at the age of eighteen. The furniture was newer in there, less dark and hefty. The bed frame was empty, the walls bare but for a framed basketball jersey over the empty desk. Belle didn’t open any closets or drawers there, and she hadn’t the last time either. It hadn’t felt right.

She stopped under the attic hatch and stared up at the string dangling down. She knew she could go up to that treasure trove of an attic again and spend an hour or two going through the dozens of cardboard boxes, wooden crates and old suitcases stuffed with jewelry boxes, wristwatches, clocks, tea sets, etchings, copper statuettes, decanters, hand mirrors, and who knows what else he was hoarding up there. It wasn’t a collection, he’d said, and it was “certainly not a hoard” either, but he hadn’t given her another explanation as to why there was an entire antiques market up in his attic, so Belle just went ahead and kept thinking of it as a hoard in the privacy of her own mind. But a nice hoard. Not one of those hoards that ended up getting houses condemned and people crushed to death.

She _could_ go up there.

But she didn’t. She walked back down the stairs instead, her finger tracing the outline of her phone in her skirt pocket again. Maybe she didn’t want to be distracted. Maybe she wanted to think about him and her until she figured out what it was that was bothering her so much.

Well, she knew, really, Belle admitted to herself as she sank down into his sofa and turned on the old television. Truly - the gray screen flashed and bloomed slowly into life with a high-pitched peep - she knew what it was.

They weren’t talking about the fact that they could just _kiss_ now.

It took them a little while to fully realize it after that first night - a week and half a movie, to be precise. It was only when she looked over and saw him sprawled so comfortably on her sofa with his elbow on the backrest and his hand in his hair and his dark eyes already fixed to hers that Belle paused the movie to set things in motion. A slow, careful set of movements that had her heart pounding somehow in the very center of her chest and made his fingers tremble ever so slightly against her flushed cheeks. She didn’t know how long they kissed, exactly, but it felt like forever and not long enough before they pried themselves apart and watched the rest of the movie in relative silence with red faces and racing hearts.

It was easier, the week after that. Belle had no more qualms taking his face in her hands and kissing him, and his fingers were no longer shaky on her skin as they wandered carefully - but not too far. His warmth, his smell, his featherlight touches turned her insides into some strange type of squirming creature that wanted nothing more than to get even closer to him, but against all logic and instinct, they stopped. They unfroze the frozen picture on the screen and joked about the terrible acting like they weren’t both out of breath and desperate to keep going. The credits would roll. They’d say goodnight. She’d crawl into bed and imagined being brave enough to ask him to stay.

But she hadn’t asked, and he hadn’t stayed, and they hadn’t talked. When they saw each other at work, it was just hugs and coffee and fond teasing - nothing out of the ordinary. The looks they shared were different, though. Longer. But…

She did worry a little bit.

A quarter of an hour into a movie she’d already seen before, Belle suddenly found her phone unlocked in her hand. No messages. No missed calls. No new e-mails, even. Well, none that mattered. Belle frowned at the screen and sank a little deeper into the cushions. What time was it there? Could she call him now? Would she wake him? Was his phone off? Would he panic if he saw her missed call?

Her finger hovered over the screen for a few seconds.

But ultimately, with a strict frown, she skipped his name in her contacts and went straight for the pizza place he once recommended her instead. Maybe by the time she’d finished her dinner, he would have called. She hoped.

Her phone stayed silent when her belly was full, and when she got out of the bathtub with her fingers wrinkly, there were no missed calls, no messages, nothing. Pouting to no-one but herself (and the quiet ghosts), Belle changed into her nightgown and decided to wait in bed. No - _relax_ there. He was probably busy, she told herself as she curled up on the right side of the bed and stared at the book she’d brought with her and immediately abandoned on the nightstand. He would probably call in the morning, and there was no need to be anxious about anything at all.

She didn’t want to read. She didn’t want to sleep. The bulb in the bedside lamp was dim, and the warm light made her think of candles. The sheets smelled like him. Or he smelled like his sheets. Or his clothes did, at least. That was probably the sanest explanation.

Things would work themselves out whether they talked about it or not. Their feelings weren’t going anywhere, were they?

Were hers?

Just to make sure that it was all still there, that it was really alright to let it rest, not to name it, not to pin it down and peer holes right through it, Belle rolled over to lie on her back and tried to recall the sparks when they embraced that night and found things different between them. It didn’t take very long for her fingertips to join the hunt for the memory quite without her conscious approval, ghosting slowly over the skin of her neck.

She let out a shaky sigh and broke out in goosebumps.

He’d touched her like that the last time they kissed. Just as slow. Never lower than her clavicle, never higher than the hem of her skirt. Somehow, it never drove her half as mad then as it did just thinking about it now.

It wasn’t a dead end, was it? They didn’t _have_ to stop there each time, did they?

Belle let her hand move slowly down over her chest, fingernails scratching lightly over the fabric of her nightgown. What if the next time they pretended to want to watch a movie together and she rested her hand ever so casually against his thigh, he just looked at her with those intense eyes all pitch black in the candlelight, grabbed her by the waist and jerked her flush against him? What if -

“Fuck!” The sudden and terrible sound of her cellphone buzzing loudly tore her out of her thoughts and his arms. She hissed a, “Shit,” for good measure, scrambled and scratched for her phone somewhere on the far corner of the nightstand, and knocked her wrist against the hard edge of it and her forgotten book right to the floor in the process.

_Touch yourself thinking of the devil._

“Hey!” she breathed cheerily, hoping she didn’t sound too strained, what with the heart attack and the sting in her wrist and all.

“Police?” said a deep voice on the other end. “There’s a squatter in my house.”

“Pff!”

How strange. How odd that though her chest was still heaving and her cheeks were still hot courtesy of some hypothetical version of him that just stayed a little longer and touched a little more freely, the _real_ him was making her giggle and roll her eyes at the same time.

“Yeah, hi. Muppet.”

That deep laugh of his that followed, though… That could have belonged to both versions of him. Belle swallowed.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?” he asked.

“No, I’m in bed, but I was just… r-reading. What time is it there?”

A second of silence followed, and then he mumbled a quiet and heart-wrenchingly tired, “You don’t want to know. I’m sorry I took so long to call. I got ambushed.”

“By Germans?”

“By the entire UN. Really, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, that’s alright,” said Belle. “I, uh… I’ve been keeping busy. How was your flight?”

“Ah, no idea, actually. But the valium was terrific.”

“Aw! You poor terrified dodo!” she cooed, picturing him nervous in his cramped seat - no, in his first class seat with all of the room in the world to spare. “Still that bad, huh?”

“Wee bit of a nightmare, yeah,” he muttered in response, sounding a little embarrassed. “But let’s not talk about that. Tell me about your day. How was work?”

“Oh, you know. Same old, but boring without you. Our coffee maker stopped working, so I went up to your floor and used one of yours.”

“Really? Did you?” he asked, incredulous.

“Yeah! Do you mind?”

“No, of course not!” Then he softened his voice again, and explained, “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“I was pretty pleased with myself, too,” she giggled. “I thought I was gonna get some weird looks, but no-one even looked up.”

“No?”

“Nope. It was like I was invisible. You’d be in trouble if I was a corporate spy.”

He laughed a sputtering laugh that made her grin and giggle again.

“Bring your imagination to heel, Mata Hari. I gave you that keycard myself.”

“Awful reference,” Belle protested. “Mata Hari got caught.”

“Precisely.”

“How dare you, you -”

Actually, it was alright that his deep, satisfied laughter distracted her from finding a mildly insulting name to call him. She liked the sound a lot. It made her feel closer to him in that moment, like he was right there with her. Biting her smiling lip, Belle curled up on her side again, and supposed, when he was all laughed out and she found she really wasn’t in the mood to fire back anymore, that it was her turn to ask him a question.

_Why are we acting like we haven’t been making out?_

“But how's the weather?”

“Hold on. I’ll go and have a look out the window.”

Belle heard a stifled groan, and she imagined him pushing himself up from a sleek looking chair somewhere in a monochrome hotel room in the middle of a city she’d never been before. The sound of a curtain being pulled made her smile grow bigger, and she rolled over on her stomach to bury it in her pillow. He was indulging her.

“Still dark out. Very gloomy, though. Looks like rain.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Well, I’m not here for pleasure. The weather might as well be miserable, too.”

Belle snorted and very fondly mumbled, “You’re weird.”

“And what does your choice of friends say about you, hm?”

_Friends._ He wasn’t wrong, but… But what? Belle half wanted to groan herself to death. She wisely made do with a deep sigh instead.

“Belle?”

“Still here!” she blurted. “Sorry. Kinda zoned out.”

“Boring you, am I? Well then, did you know about the huge book fair that’s happening here in a few months?”

In all honesty, Belle was all booked out for the day after spending a few hours in his library. But she didn’t want to disappoint, and she actually rather liked it when he baited her so shamelessly. There was something comforting about it. About being known.

“Why would you tell me that when I’m all the way over here?” she whined, wondering if he could hear the secret smile in her voice.

“Are you serious? It’s not for months. You could actually go, you know.”

Belle did _try_ to pay attention as he talked about cheap last minute flights (“ - if you insist on turning down any sensible hypothetical solutions I might sensibly and, of course, hypothetically offer.”) and charming little hotels, but even the promise of hundreds of thousands of books was not enough to stop her from drifting off and back to her earlier ruminations. They drew her right in again with thoughts of empty wine glasses and smoke curling finely up from a blackened wick, his empty spot on the sofa still warm when she flung herself down on it, and a text goodnight.

“Away with the fairies,” sounded his voice, fondness lacing it thickly, speaking so softly Belle almost didn’t hear at all.

“Sorry, I… Sorry. Still here.”

“Did I really not wake you?” he enquired gently.

“No, honestly, I’m not sleepy. I’m just…” _Tired of staring at a green light._ “Hey. Can we be serious for a moment?”

His deep, “Yes,” came a lot sooner and a lot simpler than Belle would ever have expected and oh. Well. Fuck. Her throat felt a little tight all of the sudden. Now she had to be serious, too.

“Is everything alright?” he asked when she took a little too long to collect her words and put them in order.

“Yeah!” Belle chirped in response, pausing to try to swallow away the wringing tightness in her throat. “Yeah, it’s good. I think.”

“What is?”

“What I wanted to say.”

“Oh. Well, alright then. Go on.”

_Yeah, go on._

Belle furrowed her brow and sat up on the bed, scooting back to lean against the headboard, legs folded under the sheets. She could do this, she told herself. They could talk about just about anything else. Why would this be any different? Well, there _were_ reasons. But none that she cared to examine any closer for fear of scaring herself off.

“You, uh, you know, what… what we’ve been doing, lately?”

Silence, save for her heartbeat suddenly loud in her own ears, and her careful shallow breathing. Had her lungs gotten smaller, her heart bigger? Had her ribcage shrunk to squeeze down terribly on both?

“You mean,” he began, pausing - she could hear - to lick his lips, “when I come over?”

“Yeah, you know, how we’ve been… kissing, and stuff.” _What stuff, you walnut?_ Belle clenched her eyes shut tight enough to see white and soldiered on, “I’ve been thinking about that.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too.”

Something in her chest gave a cautious flutter.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he replied. “I have. Quite… Quite a lot.”

And another.

“Good thoughts?” she asked, slowly beginning to smile.

“Yeah. Good thoughts. And yours?”

“Good thoughts. All good. It’s just that I’ve been wondering… Is it okay that we haven’t really talked about it since that night?”

Belle would have quite liked an answer to that question - preferably a growly _of course it’s alright, don’t tell me you’ve been worrying about that, hen_ \- but all she got from him was a quiet, “Oh,” that made his voice sound suddenly dry and brittle. 

“What do you think?”

“Well… If you… If you think we -” He paused very abruptly. It sounded almost as if the line had gone dead. But then she heard another little sound, a subdued mumble of realization. “We should. Shouldn’t we?”

He didn’t sound any less confused than Belle felt, and that hadn’t happened very often in all the time she’d known him. She’d always known him to _know_ things. He knew what to do, what to say, which wine would go with what flavor of chips, how to talk to the landlord, that there was no need to worry about most of the things she worried about. She regretted it then, in an instant, that she had brought it up over the bloody telephone when he was nowhere near close enough to touch, and there was no way to exchange nervous smiles until the nervousness slowly left them, and everything turned back to normal again.

“Maybe when you get back,” offered Belle, careful not to stumble over her words in her hurry to pull him back from the high wire she hadn’t meant to nudge him on to. “Not right now, obviously. Right?”

“Right, no. Of course. Not now.”

“I mean, definitely soon,” she added. “But not now.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Soon. Good.”

“Good!”

With a silent sigh, Belle closed her eyes and tried to let the tension in her shoulders melt down to nothing. Now that her heart had begun to slow, and she sank back down into the softness of his bed to smile up at the ceiling, Belle felt herself emboldened by their tiny victory. The rush and the relief had washed over her, but when it ebbed, there were still a few things left. Little shards, little somethings, glinting in the sand. A niggling bit of loneliness here, a little pool of simmering want over there, and finally, perhaps fatally: curiosity. All of it in hiding ever since her phone had rung and shocked her out of her self-indulgent reverie, but still there. Just behind her bellybutton. Burning bright. Making her talk.

“And maybe after that, when we hang out at mine again,” she began, closing her eyes so she might hear every bit of meaning in his voice when he replied, “if that’s something you wanna do, maybe instead of going home at the end of the night, you could… stay over?”

She couldn’t even hear him breathe. Her heart began to race again.

“Really? You really…”

His voice trailed off, and after a second of quiet, there was a short, contained burst of laughter the meaning of which escaped Belle completely, and her heart was just about ready to plummet down into her stomach.

“Is that funny?” she asked, blinking uselessly, trying to keep her voice the furthest away from fragile as she possibly could.

“No!” he exclaimed, the laughter gone in an instant. “God, no, no, it’s not funny! Not like that!”

Confused, Belle uttered a soft, “Okay,” and frowned at the ceiling.

“I wasn’t laughing at you,” he sighed. Belle pictured him pulling his hair back in tired frustration. “Not the suggestion. Just… the timing of it, when I’m stuck in bloody Frankfurt until Friday. You know?”

Did that mean that if he was there with her…

Her cheeks begin to glow. Her eyes grew big.

“I get it,” she replied, smiling. “That was a weirdly timed laugh, though. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Nerves, love,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.”

“Nerves?”

Alright. Maybe she was fishing for it. If he could have seen her grin, he would have known that.

“Yeah,” he breathed, his voice more textured than ever. Belle closed her eyes. “I think… I think you know what you do to me, Belle.”

In the quiet moment that came after, Belle thought of how he might touch her the next time they shared a bottle and an evening together. Something a bit more than just his hand on her thigh, or his fingers just under the collar of her blouse. More places for her own hands to wander. That knot of feelings behind her bellybutton glowed hot and squirmed.

“Are you gonna be distracted in your meetings, now?”

He laughed very deeply and very loudly, holding the phone away from his mouth so as not to burst her eardrums, which was very sweet of him, Belle thought.

“Incredibly so, yes. In all five of them. Thanks for that.”

She bit her lip until her grin broke free and with a shrug teased, “Only fair. If I’m stuck suffering over here, why shouldn’t you be stuck suffering over there?”

“Belle, darling,” he growled. God, that sounded good. “I know I shouldn’t have told you about the book fair, but that is _not_ the same kind of suffering.”

“Are you serious?” she cried. “I’m not talking about the bloody books! I wasn’t touching myself to thoughts of a nice hardcover just now!”

Belle didn’t even have time to be properly mortified that those words had actually escaped her, because a sudden and tremendously loud bang stopped her heart in her chest and made her cry out in shock.

“Are you alright?”

The bang was followed by a clatter and some strange scratching sounds. Only a distant _oh God_ in his familiar embarrassed mutter sent her heart beating again.

“Sorry about that,” sounded his voice much closer now.

“What happened?” Belle asked, turning to lie on her side again, curling up to feel safe. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, just, uh… My phone slipped from my hand.”

“Oh my god!” she gasped. “Did the screen crack?”

“It’s alright, I think. Can’t say the same for me, though. Christ, Belle. That’s what you get up to in my house?”

Her eyes grew the size of saucers, her mouth opened and closed a bit uselessly, like a blushing goldfish, but before she could come up with a halfway clever reply, he’d muttered a needless apology and stopped that train of thought in its tracks.

“God, ignore that. I’m sorry. Nerves again. I’m being an idiot. Teasing you is just… familiar. Safe, I suppose.”

Her heart was getting too big for her chest again. God, how she missed him. How he could melt her down so easily these days.

“It’s alright, you know,” she assured him, flickering the beginnings of a smile. “You don’t have to treat me any differently. I wouldn’t have kept you around all this time if I didn’t like the way you teased me.”

“Really? I thought you kept me around for the free champagne.”

“Yeah, about that!” she cried out, feigning offense. “D’you really think I’m gonna drink that on my own?”

“Why not?” he asked, mimicking her offended tone.

“Cause I wanna drink it with you!”

“We can do that some other time. It’s not the last bottle of champagne in the world.”

“If it was, I’d be zero percent surprised that you’d gotten your hands on it.”

He tried to disguise his laughter with a huff and a groan - a frankly miserable attempt at it, too - and Belle let herself succumb to the giggles, rolling over on her stomach again to grin into the pillow.

“Do you want _me_ to stop teasing?” she asked, despite knowing the answer.

“Never.”

They spent a moment in silence, during which Belle imagined him smiling like she was. Maybe a few tears of laughter in the corners of his eyes, like hers. When he yawned, holding the phone away from his mouth again, Belle felt suddenly and deeply guilty.

“I should probably let you sleep for an hour or two, right? Can’t have you snoring in your five meetings.”

“Four.”

“Didn’t you just say five?”

Mystified by his soft chuckle, Belle blinked as she reached for the bedside lamp and clicked it off. She was confused until, as her eyes adjusted to the black of night, there came a warm memory like an extra blanket out of nowhere. A memory of his face lit up in blue, his lips stretched into a blissful grin. Warmth.

“Good call,” said Belle, smiling in the darkness. “Four’s more realistic.”


	4. A Night Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Belle learns that it's good for plans to fall through sometimes, and that drinking in the workplace is alright if you're off the clock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you missed it: The chapters set before the kiss occur earlier in the timeline with each chapter. The opposite is true for the chapters set after the kiss.

_U doing anything fun?_

When her phone rang and jittered urgently on her kitchen counter not three minutes later, Belle was not surprised, but she was not annoyed either. Not tonight. Smiling and hopeful, she bumped the refrigerator door shut with her hip, put down her unopened pudding cup and grabbed her phone instead.

“Did you even read the text?”

“Yes. Have you reached the bottom of the list already?”

“Yup!” she replied cheerily, knowing instantly from experience and the playful tone of his voice that a denial of the existence of such a list was not what the mood called for. Too early in the evening for sincerity.

“That’s just tragic,” he replied, laughter in his gruff voice.

Belle, clamping the phone between her ear and her shoulder for a moment so she could open her pudding cup and grab a spoon from the drawer, said, “What’s tragic is your fear of texting.”

“Fear has nothing to do with it. You know as well as I do that if I were texting you all of this, you’d be waiting well into next year for my - … Are you eating?”

Eyes wide, Belle swallowed her mouthful of pudding and licked her lips.

“See, this is why you need to learn to text back!”

“As if you haven’t sent me any unsolicited texts about what you were having for lunch.”

The pudding was more delicious than a cheesy joke about unsolicited texts of another nature was tempting, so Belle just grinned and pushed on.

“So, what you said a while ago about not having any plans…”

“Still none whatsoever.”

“Wanna hang out, then?”

He laughed, probably at her phrasing, which he often did.

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t rather be doing literally anything else.”

Belle snorted and tried to balance the bright purple plastic spoon she got from a cereal box upright in what was left of her chocolate pudding.

“Like accepting Gaston’s new girlfriend’s pity invite to the party I helped plan, d’you mean?”

“Ouch,” he groaned. “Yeah. Fair enough, if that’s the other option.”

“So… Is that a yes to hanging out? I didn’t keep it too late?”

“No, no. Sounds good to me. Did you have anything specific in mind?”

“Ah, um…”

She hadn’t actually thought any further than that. And in the moment, looking out of a frosty kitchen window and into December darkness, all she could come up with was picking a random bar downtown and trying their luck there. They hadn’t done that before, always content with their little chats in and around the office building and the occasional café for a rushed lunch, but the thought of sharing a few hours pleasantly buzzed with someone she couldn’t seem to tire of was a very appealing one. The drink would loosen their tongues and make up for the uncertainties of a novel environment.

Then again, she hadn’t forgotten about his apartment’s spectacular view, either.

“Nothing too hectic, I hope,” he mumbled when her response took too long to arrive.

“I wasn’t gonna drag you out to go clubbing, if that’s what you mean.”

Although the mental picture of him in his seven thousand layers of expensive dark fabric, lit up by flashing colored lights and glowering in a sticky booth was something else. Belle wanted to squish his imagined grumpy face something fierce.

“That’s a relief. What’s the plan, then?”

“The plan, for now,” she started, twisting her spoon slowly in the cup, “is to come up with a plan together. We could meet up outside and figure out what to do then. Or you could come to mine. Or I could come to yours, if you like.”

“I’m not at home at the moment. I’m at the office.”

“Are you kidding me?” she sighed. “Isn’t it like, eight?”

“Oh, don’t you give me that,” he growled. “I’m practically done here. Just say the word and I’ll wrap things up and be on my way home.”

Yeah. His place. There was no passing up a view like that.

Except for a more spectacular view.

“Actually, I’ve got a better idea! Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

Belle heard the familiar squeak of his leather desk chair as it swiveled, and wondered why he hadn’t yet oiled that huge thing. Or gotten a new one.

“What if I just join you over there? Your office has an awesome view, right? Wouldn’t that be perfect?”

There was a brief moment of silence, and then an exhale.

“And then if we wanna go grab a drink or something, after, we could just walk from there.”

“That does sound like a sensible plan.”

“Sensible, or good? Cause I can imagine you’re tired of sitting in your office.”

“I’m not.”

“You should be!”

He chuckled and muttered, “Well, I’m not. How much time do you need?”

Well, she’d already showered. Bit of make-up, then. Blow dry her hair. Find the dress that had been stuffed in the back of her closet since mid November.

“Oh, uh. I don’t know. Forty-five minutes? Do you wanna head home first?”

“No, that’s fine.”

“Awesome!” cheered Belle, grinning as she clumsily tried to scoop the last of her pudding onto her spoon one-handed. “I’ll bring wine.”

“There’s really no need, Belle. You know I’ve always got -”

“I’m bringing wine!”

“Fine,” he sighed. “But then you’d better bring the aspirin, too.”

…

Belle got out of the cab cradling a bottle of red wine she knew he would only pretend to think was subpar stuff. She breathed in deep. The air was crisp, the sky pitch black, her legs very, very cold.

He was waiting in front of the glass and steel giant of a building they both spent their days in, one hand dug deep into his winter overcoat, another one gloved and holding his cane, and a black scarf slung lightly around his neck and over his shoulder. He perked up when he heard her heels on the concrete clicking closer, smiled when he turned and noticed her.

“Hello,” he mouthed, knowing she wouldn’t hear him over the flashy car blasting Prince as it drove past. She gave a little wave and a grin in return.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked with a quirked eyebrow once she was within reasonable hearing range. “You really want to be in the office tonight?”

“Why not?” she shot back, glancing over his shoulder at the darkness of the lobby. No lights on. “ _You_ don’t mind.” She looked up and saw nothing but black windows up above. But he might have kept the light in his office on; it was too high up to tell, even when she let her head fall back and stared straight up.

“Ah, but I have nothing better to do,” he argued as he pulled out his keycard from his coat pocket and magicked the door open for them. “You have no such excuse.”

“Well, we won’t be hanging out in _my_ office. It’s different. And I hardly need an excuse to wanna hang out with a friend.”

“We’re friends?” he teased, shooting her a quick little smirk over his shoulder as she followed him to the elevators.

Belle rolled her eyes and tried not to grin. One way to beat him at this game was… Well, to change the game, really. Just to take the play battle elsewhere. She had learned that if she responded to his teasing and his humorous self-deprecation with an unexpected salvo of sincerity, that tended to flummox the great big secret softie into silence.

“Course. We like spending time together. We laugh a lot.”

“That’s all it takes, aye?”

The elevator furthest to the right opened the second he pressed the button. Belle followed him in, smiling to herself.

“That, and the fact that I like you a whole lot, and you clearly like me, so yeah. Friends. Deal with it.”

He probably thought he wasn’t smiling as he averted his eyes and pushed the button for the top floor. The elevator hummed low and began to move.

It was a long way up.

And it was quiet, until Belle began to unbutton her peacoat and he remarked, “You’re very sparkly tonight.”

She looked down at her dress, a dark blue sequined thing she was quite partial to but had never worn. “You like it?” she asked.

“I do. It’s a nice dress. Lovely color on you.”

Dress and appearance, that was something he was always sincere about, even if there was ample opportunity to tease. He could have asked her if she’d borrowed it from a sad mirror ball or something, for example. But he didn’t.

“I got it ages ago, actually,” she said quietly, absently pulling down the fabric over her hips a bit more. “Just for tonight. Well, I mean, for the night I had planned. But I figured…”

Belle abandoned her sentence and shrugged instead. He smiled.

“Rightly so. You look great in it.”

“Thank you!” she chirped.

“If it were me, I would have worn it, too.” When her face froze into a wide-eyed look of surprise, he laughed darkly. “Do yourself a favor and stop picturing it.”

Belle cast her eyes up at the elevator ceiling in fake deep thought, then pursed her lips and wriggled her head. “It’s not so bad, actually. I think the color would really make your eyes pop.”

The elevator doors opened to an empty reception area. Past the locked double doors there was an empty floor, empty desks lit by square ceiling lights, empty chairs, empty hallways, empty coatracks. It felt strange to walk through a place she’d only ever seen bustling and busy like a beehive. But as they walked slowly on and turned the corner into the hallway that led to his office, where it was always quiet no matter how frantic the rest of the floor, things began to feel less strange and more familiar.

There was no need to close the door behind them, so she didn’t. Belle put her bottle on his desk, her coat on the hatstand next to the door, and her sparkly bum in his fancy desk chair, because she knew he didn’t mind. As he put away his cane and shrugged out of his coat, Belle spun the squeaky chair towards the wall of windows. The view was somehow both darker and brighter than she had seen it during the day, with the sky pitch black and the buildings all lit up.

It was nice and toasty in there. Belle knew her face would go bright red not two sips into her wine, or his… whatever he was about to pull out of his drinks cabinet. With the wooden panelling and the leather seats, everything in the room was sleek and modern, like what she’d seen of his apartment, but somehow less cold. Was that why he spent so much time here, she wondered?

“And why do you have so much booze in here?” she asked, forgetting for a moment that she hadn’t asked that first question out loud at all. Meanwhile, he had disappeared into a smaller room in the back where she heard the distinct sound of a refrigerator being opened.

“Loosens pursestrings,” he replied, raising his voice for her to hear over the sound of what she assumed were glasses being retrieved from a cupboard.

“Yours too?”

“When I need them to be loose, yes.”

He was smiling when he reappeared, holding up a bottle of champagne in one hand and two champagne flutes in the other. That was a little more appropriate than a bottle of wine, Belle had to admit. He popped the cork carefully and deftly, and frowned in concentration as he poured two generous glasses.

“Been a while, hasn’t it? How’ve you been?” he asked, sliding her her glass.

“Thanks,” she said, accepting with a grateful smile. “I’ve been alright. Christmas with my dad’s always nice and quiet.”

He sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of the desk, where Belle imagined he’d made quite a few people quake in their boots.

“Is he doing alright? How are the headaches?”

“Gone!” answered Belle. “Just a stress thing, probably. With the holidays, business just kind of picked up again.”

“That’s good to hear,” he replied, bringing his glass up to his mouth for a long sip.

Out of the corner of her eye, Belle spotted the framed picture of a small brown-haired boy that she’d noticed before, with a felt pirate hat - crossbones and all - perched jauntily on his head, and asked, “How was your Christmas?”

He paused mid-sip, giving a quick surprised glance over the rim of his glass.

“Quiet,” he said. He put it down on the desk and put on a smile. “Perfectly enjoyable.”

“How’s your son?” she asked, smiling warmly.

“He’s well. So’s his girlfriend, which is good to hear. There wasn’t much room in the Christmas card for anything else, but that’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

Belle’s smile froze and cracked and fell in pieces.

“He, ah… He’s traveling with his girlfriend,” he clarified quietly, looking down at his fingers tapping a nervous rhythm on the desk. “We’ll make it work next year, I’m sure.”

He put on a brave smile purely for her benefit, but it was not enough to make her stomach feel less awful and hollow.

He’d spent Christmas alone.

He could have spent it with _her_.

… And her dad, which would have been slightly weird, but…

“Belle,” he sighed, replacing his inefficient smile with a reprimanding frown instead. “You’re looking at me like you’re watching an ASPCA appeal. Please don’t.”

She frowned. “I’ll stop when you stop looking like a puppy,” she mumbled, trying to swing them back to their usual pattern of pleasant chatter and well-natured teasing.

He smiled a half smile, raised his glass, and in a deep voice dryly went, “Woof.”

…

Catching a glimpse of her smiling face in the dark windows as they passed them, Belle noticed her face was hot and red as expected, but she was buzzed enough not to care that she must have looked like a cooked lobster in a party dress. In the pit of her stomach was a little sparkle of excitement getting more and more restless as time ticked on.

“We could just order proper food, you know,” he remarked, nevertheless following her loyally as she made her way to where he said the break room was. “Or go out and get you some.”

Belle held their bottle of champagne by the neck, loosely swinging it by her side as they went. In her other hand: her purse, swinging a little more wildly.

“I’m not _proper_ hungry,” she said, cheerily tapping the light switch in the small white room and blinking as the fluorescent lights buzzed to life. “I’m _sugary junk_ hungry.”

Ah, and there, pushed up against the wall between the water cooler and the waste bin, stood two great big vending machines, humming peacefully. One full of snacks, the other just drinks.

“Do you want anything?” she asked, letting her gaze travel over the colorful options.

“I don’t think so,” he replied, groaning a bit as he lowered himself into a chair, rested his arm on the table she’d put their bottle on. “I don’t have any change on me, anyway.”

“Of course you don’t,” snorted Belle, smirking at his reflection in the glass as she grabbed a handful of coins from her purse.

“Don’t say that like I only walk around with hundred dollar bills,” he grumbled. “I left my wallet in the office.”

“That’s totally the image you’re trying to project, though.”

“I’m not trying to project anything,” he protested, making her roll her eyes and think quietly to herself, _liar_.

“Alright! My treat!” she sang, dropping coins into the slot.

He looked like chocolate sort of guy, didn’t he? Or was that just a really dumb, really simplistic association with his hair and his eyes? Cause that _was_ dumb.

“Do you like chocolate? I do.” 

She punched in the code for the small bag of M&Ms that had caught her eye. The bag fell down into the drawer with a satisfying sound like a packet full of small marbles.

“You know, I can see actual chocolate in there,” he remarked, nodding towards the vending machine. “You don’t have to settle for -”

“Catch!” she cried, tossing him the pack. When he caught it with wide eyes, Belle cheered and clapped.

“- _this_ ,” he finished, grinning now and looking mighty pleased with himself.

“I’m not settling. These are great. I love these.”

And again. Coins in the slot, same code as before, same pleasing sound as the pack of M&Ms fell into the drawer at the bottom of the machine. Belle shook the little bag before she tore it open, and wondered how many of them had cracked on their abrupt journey down.

“Ah, fuck,” sounded his gruff voice behind her. Belle turned around with her brow raised, which prompted him to nod towards the champagne bottle and explain, “Forgot the glasses on my desk. I’ll go get them.”

“No no! No need!” she hurried, waving at him to sit back down again. “They were empty, anyway.”

Instead, Belle took two plastic cups from the stack beside the water cooler, which made him laugh.

“What?” she asked, twinkling a grin as she put down his empty cup in front of him, a little harder than she’d meant to. Oops. Definitely buzzed.

“Nothing.”

She raised a quizzical eyebrow and took the chair opposite his, focusing her stare on him until, when her cup was halfway filled, he cracked under that minimal amount of pressure.

“Alright,” he sighed, smiling still. “It’s just the contrast of the dress and the nice hair with this entire room. The fluorescent lights, the fridge behind you, the champagne in the plastic cups - everything, really.”

“Nice hair?” repeated Belle, feigning coyness.

He lifted his cup at her lazily, smirked a lopsided smirk and said, “Very nice.”

“But funny nice hair?”

Mid-sip, he frowned and shook his head very carefully, and when he finally swallowed, he told her, “No. It’s just the contrast. Because everything else isn’t very nice at all.”

“Well, take a picture, then! I want in on the joke!”

“Alright,” he chuckled softly, reaching for his phone in his pocket.

It made Belle remember her own phone, still in her purse slung over the back of her chair. Very quickly, without really knowing why, she took it out and checked for any missed messages. None.

“Ready?”

“Yeah, just a sec.”

Belle reached behind her to put her phone away again, then pushed her chair back a bit, crossed one leg over the other and gave the little camera in the corner of his phone her most ridiculous, poutiest look. The flash didn’t go off, which was probably for the best, but the shutter sound told her it was done.

“Wait, one more,” he said, almost laughing, voice very deep. The screen of his phone lit up his face and made his grin suddenly very bright. “Hold the cup. Maybe pull the bottle a wee bit closer.”

Belle did as her photographer asked, pulling the champagne bottle closer, making sure to twist it so the label faced outwards.

“Nice touch.”

“Right?”

Next, she shifted in her chair to rest her elbow on the back of the chair, and put the cup up to her still pouting lips.

“Ah, that’s just perfect, that is,” he laughed, and again came the shutter sound.

“All done?” chirped Belle.

“All done.”

“Lemme see, then!”

Belle hoisted herself out of her chair, almost tripping over her feet in the process and making him laugh even harder. She joined him at his side of the table and leaned over his shoulder.

“Oh my God!” she gasped, clasping her hand over her mouth not to sputter and giggle his screen full of spit, which was a distinct possibility, because she thought she looked bloody preposterous there with the microwave right behind her and her dress sparkling like gemstones in the harsh fluorescent light.

“Look at this one, though,” he said, swiping the screen to the next picture.

“It’s like Thursday night in a student housing kitchen!”

“Bored pop star meets English students in karaoke bar, buys them booze, follows them home.”

Belle threw her head back and cackled, gripping his shoulders for balance even though they shook in his own laughter.

“Brilliant. Send me those some time.”

“I will.” 

Her face red and hot from champagne and laughter, Belle waddled back over to her own chair, still holding onto his left shoulder for the first steps. Just to be safe.

“You’ve made me feel very underdressed tonight, I have to say,” he mumbled as he topped off their oh so glamorous plastic water cups with more champagne. “I changed before you came, but still. If I’d have known…”

Of course. He probably had an entire wardrobe somewhere in that office of his. Why not? He had a kitchen back there.

“You only think you’re underdressed now cause you're always overdressed,” muttered Belle, waving her hand dismissively.

“Still makes me underdressed for this occasion, doesn’t it?”

Belle frowned to herself, giving the matter perhaps a bit more thought than was necessary as she poured half the contents of her bag of M&Ms onto the table. When he huffed softly at that, Belle looked up and saw that he had been very neatly fishing his out of his own bag, one by one. With a shrug, Belle picked a blue one for a first victim. She liked the blue ones.

“I mean, I guess I can see your point,” she said, in between a blue M&M and a red one, “but it’s not like the three piece suits have gotten any less impressive over the months.”

They sat quietly for a moment. He took a sip, nodded slowly, and watched as Belle began to group all the blue M&Ms together.

“They’re too much.”

It was a question. Belle was well on her way to decently drunk at that point, but she knew it was a question. She heard it, she _saw_ it when he glanced up from the table and then quickly back down when he noticed she was already watching him. It was definitely a question.

“They’re not too much.”

“The term is _over_ dressed for a reason, though,” he muttered, fishing out another M&M from his little bag. When he noticed it was blue, he put it with Belle’s growing collection.

“Well, yeah, but that doesn’t mean… Not in the bad way you’re thinking.”

He smiled and shook his head, clearly wanting to end the conversation, perhaps a little surprised that he himself had given things that rare nudge towards the sincere. But Belle had never seen him make himself the teensiest bit vulnerable before. Not like that. And she wanted to respond the right way.

Whatever that was.

He wasn’t looking up anymore, so Belle lightly flicked a yellow M&M with the tip of her finger and made it roll all the way to his side of the table, where it bumped into his sleeve. He looked up, brow raised.

“I like the suits,” she said, smiling fondly. “And if you like the suits, then you need to keep wearing the suits.”

He made a tortured sound in the back of his throat and grimaced.

“You should! Really!”

“Yes, yes, thank you,” he mumbled, his grimace turning slowly into an incontrollable grin, making Belle want to giggle, because oh, there he went, all embarrassed because she said something nice and meant it. Silly man.

“ _Everyone_ likes the suits, by the way. They always mention that when they ask me about you.”

“Yes yes yes, fine, thank you, it’s fine,” he sang, putting his hands over his ears like a kid forced to hear about the birds and the bees from his slightly too enthusiastic parents.

“Alright! I’ll drop it! But I mean it.”

His face was red, and he was still smiling when he uncovered his ears and leaned back in his chair. With a grumbled, “Thank you,” he took another sip.

“We clearly need to get you drunker, though,” Belle decided.

“That we agree on.”

…

“Hey!” she called out from the weird little kitchen area of his office. She’d wandered in there because the exception he had made for the champagne earlier apparently did not extend to anything beyond that. Tumblers for the whiskey, and nothing else.

“Yeah?”

“You can go out on the roof through here!”

With wide eyes and a grin of delight, Belle stood in front of a glass door behind which a stretch of roof that just begged to be explored. Beyond that, behind a little brick wall about waist-height, lay the city with its bright night lights, wide awake and waiting, just like them. She tried the handle. The door was locked.

“Do you have the key?”

She heard him get up in the other room, and then the tapping of his cane. He appeared in the doorway with his lips slightly parted and his brow furrowed.

“I do, but…”

Belle raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Too cold?” she asked, utterly confused that he wasn’t sharing her excitement.

“No, no. Just never been out there before.”

“First time for everything, right?” she asked, subjecting him to her most hopeful look with her smile bright and her head cocked just a tiny bit to the side. “And I can’t think of a better night to try.”

“I’ll go get the key,” he sighed, smiling nevertheless. “You pour the whiskey.”

Belle squealed in delight and dashed past him to get her coat, forgetting about the whiskey entirely until she saw him hold up the bottle for her to take. So with the bottle in one hand and her coat under her arm, Belle sped - a little more carefully now, what with that bottle in her care - back to the little room in the back and _barely_ spilled any whiskey as she poured them two quick glasses.

His own coat hanging over his arm, Gold opened the drawer underneath the espresso machine and fished out a shiny key. As Belle bit her lip in squirming excitement, he unlocked the door, smiled, opened it, and held it for her.

“Don’t run.”

“Course not!”

Though every tingling cell in her body was screaming _do it_ , Belle went very carefully, step by step, glass in hand, coat and purse still under her arm, out into the cold winter night. Like the world’s most obedient pup being let out to play in the garden. She was tipsy. Her skin was hot. The wind felt amazing on her face as she walked further out.

“Beautiful,” she whispered when the tips of her shoes bumped into the wall keeping her from plummeting down.

Down below, red and white lights traveled up and down the street. Across the street, someone was walking slowly towards the center of town, their massive cellphone screen a beacon at full brightness. Further up from the ground, the building facades were dotted with little yellow squares of lit rooms. And above that, beyond that, more lights. Just lights in an ocean of darkness. Red, green, blue, white, yellow. Hundreds.

She was smiling so hard it nearly hurt. When she turned around, she found him still standing by the door. Looking at her. Holding his glass. His overcoat moving rather dramatically in the wind.

“Coming?” she called out.

“Yeah.”

But he didn’t move an inch.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, leaving her glass on the wall and taking a step towards him.

“Ah, just…” he began, pausing to shake his head and flash a sheepish smile. “Not my cup of tea, that’s all.”

“Heights?”

But there came no answer, even as he began to walk towards her, hands in his pockets, eyebrows close together. She knew his cane was still propped up against his desk inside, and for a moment, Belle wondered if she should go and get it. But she was strangely transfixed by his determined stare fixed to the skyline up ahead. She couldn’t move.

“You don’t have to look down,” she told him as he approached the edge of the roof. “I think you can see your place from here.”

When he joined her, Belle took his glass from him, put it on the wall and watched his breath curl out in smoke from between his parted lips.

“See?” she asked, nudging him gently with her elbow and pointing towards a dark grey building in the distance. It looked so small from here. “Right there.”

He followed her finger, stared for a few seconds, then looked straight down without any hesitation.

“You don’t have to look down!” she gasped, grabbing his upper arm and squeezing it.

His long hair fluttered about his face, making it difficult to see his eyes. His expressive mouth. The lines around his eyes that spoke a thousand words.

“It’s not as bad as I thought it would be,” he remarked quietly.

She blinked. Loosened her death grip on his arm just a bit. “Yeah?”

“Mm. I thought it’d be worse.”

He tired of the hair in his face before Belle did, and tucked it deftly behind his ear, never once taking his eyes from the depths.

“You’re not afraid of heights, then?”

“I thought I was,” he explained, crinkling his nose, a tiny little smile making the corners of his lips twitch. “But I think it’s just flying. I hate flying.”

“Alright, that’s great, but you can stop staring now,” she urged him, pulling at his arm. “I’m freaking out _for_ you.”

He straightened himself with a soft, deep laugh and a smile that vanished when he looked at her. She let his arm slip from her grasp at last.

“What?” she asked, brow deeply furrowed.

He took her coat from under her arm and held it open for her.

“Still a few minutes left. Be silly to freeze to death now.”

Leaning on the wall side by side, staring out into the night, they sipped their whiskey very slowly and spoke very little. In one of the silences in between, Belle took out her phone and checked the time. Almost there. No missed messages. She wondered how her party was going, all the way on the other side of town.

“Waiting to hear from someone? Gaston?”

“Nah.”

He gave her a kind but utterly unbelieving smile, and Belle knew it would have been enough to melt her even if she had been stone cold sober.

“I don’t miss him,” she sighed. “I just wish he’d… I don’t know…”

“Suffer?”

“No!” she laughed, scrunching her nose.

“Thank you?”

“No. Maybe. But it doesn’t matter. I broke up with him, so I don’t get to be annoyed that he moved on so quick. A month isn’t even that quick, I mean, relatively speaking.”

“Who told you you don’t get to be annoyed?” he blurted, screwing up his face and jerking his head back.

“No-one. It’s just common sense, right?”

“No, it’s not. Feel what you feel. As long as -”

“I don’t want him back!” Belle interrupted, slapping her palms flat on the little wall they were leaning on. Nearly knocked over her glass, there. Oops.

He laughed at her passionate denial and slid her glass a bit further from her hands, cooing, “I believe you.”

“Good. Cause I mean it. Breaking up with him was the best thing I did in a long time,” she said, silencing her phone and putting it in her coat pocket.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s been really peaceful. I think I really need to be alone for a while. I was kind of scared I was gonna be lonely, but I’m not.”

“I’m glad.”

He put his glass up to his smiling lips and took a slow sip.

“Are you lonely?” she asked.

He often frowned when she said something he didn’t expect her to, but unlike all those times, there was nothing theatrical about it. His face didn’t scream that playful _bloody hell, French, you’re strange_ it often did. He was just thinking. Staring out into the night.

“No,” he said, shaking his head a little bit.

Belle smiled and bumped her shoulder into his. “I’m glad.”

When the explosions came, when the sky flashed and glittered bright red and green and purple and white and whatnot, when the people down below cheered and the cars passing in the street honked, Belle threw her arms around his shoulders and kissed his cold cheek.

“Happy New Year!” she sang, letting her arms fall from his shoulders.

He was grinning wide, looking happy, and a little bit ridiculous, too; the wind had ruffled his hair, and she’d kissed him hard enough to leave a magnificent red lipstick print. Biting down on a grin, Belle hoped he would only notice it in the morning.

“Happy New Year, Belle,” he replied, and he pulled her closer with a hand on her waist, and pressed a firm kiss to her temple.

The fireworks they watched together that night were prettiest fireworks Belle had ever witnessed in her entire life.

…

They didn’t last very long in the bar they wandered into about an hour later, arm in arm. They stayed long enough to tip the drunkenness scales from ‘pretty drunk, yes,’ to ‘oh dear,’ and then stumbled out together, giggling, blushing, talking altogether much too loudly, alerting a nearby police officer who couldn’t make head nor tail of their accents (“You’re no’ making sense to the poor lad, hen.” “Me? You’re not even finishing your words, you spanner!”) until the nice man ascertained that the bottle of wine they were carrying was indeed, as they had been trying to convey, unopened.

Then, out on the street and waiting for a cab, there came a moment in which Belle’s alcohol-addled brain decided that since she’d had such a lovely night thus far, it was clearly high time for a cry. Sadness filled her with a frightening force out of nowhere, making her stomach clench and her lips tremble.

“You’re just so nice!” she cried out, eyes suddenly filled with tears, arms wrapped around the unopened bottle of wine as if clinging on to life itself. “I can’t believe you spent Christmas alone!”

All the way back in her skull, through the thick, drunken haze, Belle knew she was being ridiculous. But it was too late, and her face was wet, and his eyes were huge and panicky, his lips opening and closing all helpless and lost, and that made her feel even worse.

“Sorry,” she sobbed.

But he stepped close and pulled her into a clumsy hug right there in the middle of the sidewalk, letting her sob in his arms for a moment as he mumbled soothing things over her shoulder and patted her on the back.

“I’m really drunk,” she sniffled, letting go of his shoulder for a second or two to wipe her tears on her sleeve and spare his coat.

“I know, dear. You’ll feel better soon.”

It was no lie. She did feel better when the cab came and they crawled into it. By the time he’d whispered a bad joke about the cabbie’s taste music in her ear, she had forgotten all about it, in fact, and unbeknownst to her in that moment, the memory would not be resurfacing for a very long time.

“Ah, screw cap,” he sighed blissfully as he took the wine bottle from her hands and began to open it. “Bless you, Belle, wee genius.”

The wine helped, too.

…

Well, perhaps ‘help’ was not the right word, exactly. Belle could feel the hangover coming from a mile away, heavy and sharp at the same time, dull and all-encompassing. In the cab, her vision had been _this_ close to spinning. By some miracle, by the time they’d started climbing the stairs to her apartment, that danger had passed, and she felt light and giddy again.

And sleepy.

“Cuppa?” asked Belle, missing the coat hook by an inch or two and letting her coat fall into a little heap on the ground. She’d gotten rid of her heels the moment she walked through her front door. He’d nearly tripped over them.

“You shouldn’t be anywhere _near_ your stove,” he sputtered.

“Electric kettle, gramps,” she teased.

“You wound me,” he mumbled, splaying his hand over his chest, “but you’re my favorite. Did you know that?”

Belle grinned at him and forgot about the tea in a matter of seconds. He stood there, coat over his arm, looking for her coat hooks with bleary eyes. What he was looking for was right next to where he was swaying to and fro, left and right, just a little bit.

“Favorite what?” she asked.

Finally! Success! He had managed to put his coat away and didn’t even trip over her peacoat as he walked further into the room.

“I dunno,” he mumbled with a shrug.

“Well, you’re my favorite I dunno too.”

“ ’n That dress is great,” he added, ploofing down onto her sofa with a groan.

“Your suits are great.”

“Hush.”

“You can crash on my sofa if you want,” offered Belle, perching on the arm of the sofa he was slowly, steadily sinking further down in.

“Could take ten steps and crash on my own.”

She laughed, and he laughed, but then he simply keeled over like a heavy tree in slow motion, and curled up on her sofa with a self-aware smirk on his red face. Perfect. Belle decided that he needed a blanket. She grabbed the first thing that looked vaguely appropriate through her drunken eyes, but that turned out to be his scarf. She only noticed because he’d started to chuckle at her, his grin slow and lazy and his eyes two narrow strips of gleaming brown. Only then did she fetch the patchwork quilt from the arm chair instead.

“You can laugh at me,” she drawled, grinning as she draped the quilt over him. “I don’t mind.”

“’m Laughing _with_ you.”

Belle tucked the edges of the quilt under his knees, his elbows and his back, to the best of her plastered abilities.

“I’ve heard that before. What does that mean?”

“Dunno. But it’s nicer.”

Belle snorted a laugh and ruffled his hair. _God_ , it was soft. If she remembered anything about this evening at all, it would be to ask him about his conditioner.

“Mm. Should go,” he murmured, body squirming and settling for sleep. He looked so warm and cozy there, Belle almost wanted to slide down the back of the sofa and join him under that quilt.

But beds were nice, too. Especially hers.

She held on to the backrest for dear life and swooped down to kiss the top of his head. It made him purr like a giant kitten. She knew that he had probably just conked out anyway, but still Belle smiled, patted his head and with the last heavy slur of the night, told him, “Stay, sleepy.”


	5. A Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A hellish flight, a dramatic moment, a talk.

Humming a tune under her breath, Belle made her way into the break room. It was Friday, and that was even more brilliant than usual, because today was the day he was coming back.

And not a day too soon. Sure, absence made the heart grow fonder, but in Belle’s case, it had also made it go a bit weird in the sense that she’d had a dream the night before, and it had made that fond heart of hers go completely haywire for a moment. There was no plot, really. Just a glimpse of him smiling at someone the way he smiled at her, and then a pair of arms around him that weren’t hers. When she woke up in the middle of the night with those images fresh in her mind and a faint unease in her belly, she’d had to get out of bed to crack a window open, and she’d murmured an awed, “That’s new,” into the night.

So when Belle spotted him standing at her desk from behind the glass door of the break room that Friday afternoon, her heart sprouted wings and fluttered. He had his back to her, but there was no mistaking that hair and the perfect fit of that suit jacket. She put the clean coffee mug she’d just grabbed back on the shelf and hurried over, grinning ear to ear. On any other day, she would have relished the opportunity to sneak up on him and make him jump, but she’d missed him far too much for that. She didn’t have the patience.

“Hey!”

Nearly there. He turned around, eyes big, lips parted, as if he was surprised to see her. She stretched out her arms to hug him, still grinning like mad.

“How was the valium?”

There was no warning when he stepped close, grabbed hold of her shoulders, swooped in and kissed her hard. Stunned, Belle’s eyes exploded to the size of cupcakes, her arms dropping limp by her sides.

The room fell silent. No chatter, just the background hum of computer fans and the AC up above their heads. Once the first ice cold wave of shock had washed over her, Belle let her eyes flutter shut, because that was what you did when you were kissed, wasn’t it? She put her fingertips to his chest, pressed down gently. She didn’t want to push him away; she just wanted to make sure he was actually awake.

Because this was not like him.

When he broke the kiss, she opened her eyes. The sight of him didn’t reassure her much at all. His eyes were bloodshot, locked to hers in the most intense look she’d ever seen on him.

“I didn’t take it.”

He wasn’t alright. He clearly wasn’t.

“Are you…”

Belle trailed off when she heard a cough all the way on the other side of the floor. Somewhere behind her, a telephone went unanswered for a little too long. Swallowing, she looked over her shoulder and saw nothing but eyes on them. Them and the cat that had leapt screaming out of the bag just then.

“Sorry.”

His dry croak made her turn her gaze back to him, and she saw panic in his eyes and a tremble in his lip that stunned her completely. He seemed horrified by what he’d done. Probably felt the stares burning holes right through them. Belle wanted desperately to comfort him, but the sense had gone out of her the moment his mouth had come crashing into her own in that searing kiss, and she was pretty much useless in the moment. Hyper aware of the stares and the whispers. Paralyzed.

“I-It’s -”

“I’m so sorry,” he hurried, his hands slipping weakly from her shoulders as he took an unsteady step back. “I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry.”

He stumbled towards the doors, shaking his head, leaving her behind. Where was his cane? She checked if he hadn’t propped it up against her desk, but it wasn’t there. When she looked back up, he had gone through the door and it was falling shut.

“Hold on!”

No. She had to catch up. Her stomach lurching, Belle snatched her lanyard from the edge of the desk and rushed after him, flying straight past staring eyes.

“Wait!”

She pulled the handle, but the door had locked itself already. A quick swipe of the keycard made the reader beep and the locking mechanism whir. She jerked it open and breathed a sigh of relief when she found him standing in front of the elevators, hand in his messy hair. Still there.

“Hey.”

He let his arm drop. Behind her, the heavy door creaked shut and locked itself again.

“Are you alright?” she breathed, walking slowly up to him as he turned around to face her - a frightened, injured woodland creature. “What’s wrong?”

Now that she felt the worry and the affection for him so keenly, she knew what it was she felt before. She’d never once seen him so genuinely discomposed, and what with everyone staring and with that unfamiliar panicked look in his eyes, she realized now that she might have been a little bit frightened back there. But there was none of that, now. Fear was cold, and what she felt now was warming her from the inside out.

“’m An idiot,” he mumbled, barely audible over the sound of the elevator jolting into action on a different floor.

No. Not scared at all.

“Oh, c’mere,” she sighed, closing the last bit of distance between them to throw her arms around his neck and pull him as close as she possibly could. He leaned into her immediately, sighing breath into her hair, hot against her neck. There was no hesitation in his movements when his arms came up to wrap around her waist.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” He let her pull his head down onto her shoulder when she shushed him, became a little softer when she slid her fingers into his hair. “Tell me what’s happened.”

“Flight was hell. Turbulence. Hated it. Just… paralyzed.”

When the elevator opened with a _ding_ , they simply ignored it. He didn’t even tense in her arms, nor did he lift his heavy warm head from her shoulder to look up. When the doors closed again and they were still alone, Belle realized he’d pressed the button before she even got there.

“Hey,” she murmured, coiling a few locks of his hair around her fingers. “Why didn’t you take the valium?”

“Ridiculous reasons,” he grumbled. He pulled gently out of her embrace and took a step back. “Doesn’t matter.”

She wanted to know, but she decided not to ask. Not now. At least Belle recognized the man standing in front of her now, even if he was just a little more preoccupied with beating himself up than usual. He was just exhausted, that was all. A little dinged up, but it was still him.

“Hey, but you made it here in one piece, didn’t you?”

“Not without losing complete control over myself, like a child.” He lowered his voice then, sounded weak and wounded when he murmured, “I shouldn’t have done that in front of everyone. Wasn’t fair to you.”

Belle swallowed, shook her head and stared at the tips of her shoes and the worn blue carpet under their feet for a while. She didn’t know how she felt about that. She couldn’t think about it now.

“Look, just… Don’t worry about it,” she said, looking up to smile at him. “Did you sleep at all?”

He gave her a guilty look, twitched his head no.

“Oh my God!” she gasped, reaching out to grab him by the wrist. “Please tell me you didn't drive here, at least.”

“No, I didn’t drive. I won’t drive today.”

That was a relief. Belle let his wrist slip from her grip so she could take his hand instead. It was clammy, but he wasn’t shaking, and when he finally looked at her and tried to smile, Belle saw a little ray of hope in the gesture. It was as if the room got lighter, the air cooler, and when he breathed in deep and sighed out the tension, she knew he was coming back to her, slowly but surely.

“You feeling better now, weirdo?” she teased, making him laugh and squeeze her hand.

“I think I will if you kick me or pinch me or something,” he muttered with a wry smile, letting go of her hand. “I feel like such a prick.”

Belle pursed her lips and knitted her eyebrows together disapprovingly. “Yeah, I’m not about to kick a puppy.”

“Can you at least make fun of me, then?” he pleaded.

With a sigh, Belle put her hands on her hips, cast her eyes up at the ceiling and tried to think of something.

“Go on. You can do it, lass. Don’t tell me I haven’t given you enough material.”

She snorted, clenched her eyes shut, tried not to laugh.

“Alright, fine! There _is_ something, actually.”

“Good!”

“What kind of spoiled ingrate flies first class and then doesn’t even have the decency to take a nap!”

“Business class,” he corrected her, lifting his chin just a fraction of an inch in defiance. “You make it sound so -”

Biting her grinning lip, Belle poked him in the stomach before he found the word he was looking for. He made a sound somewhere in between a yelp and a giggle.

“What, expensive? Showy? Did you skip the fancy meal cause you brought your own sandwiches, too?”

He chuckled and took an unsteady step back to escape her poking finger, and ah, there he was again. Her best friend. Making her smile effortlessly just by being his ridiculous self.

“How was that?”

“That was great,” he said, laughter in his tired eyes, the skin around them crinkling. “Thank you.”

And there was the other thing again, that feeling settling itself right back in that spot behind her bellybutton as he stood there and smiled at her with those gorgeous dark eyes so full of gratitude, making her feel like the center of the universe.

The thing that made her want to kiss him these days.

“Any time. Go home, alright? Get some sleep.”

He looked very serious all of the sudden, nodding gravely, furrowing his brow. “I will. I’d just… I’d like to talk to you tonight, Belle.”

“Tonight?”

“Not a good time?”

“No, that’s not it. I’m free. But are you sure? I know I said we should talk when you got back, but it doesn’t have to be tonight.”

“I know.”

Since he wasn’t being very generous with his words today, which was understandable considering the state of him, Belle took a moment to read his face. Tired. Handsome. Calm. _Handsome_. Her eyes drifted down to his lips, and when he smiled, that jolted her out of it. Whatever it was.

“As long as you get some rest first,” she decided.

“I’m going straight home to sleep,” he said, proving his intent by pressing the elevator button one more time. “You can stop by whenever you like. I won’t be going anywhere.”

“Six thirty? We could order food.”

“Perfect.”

Belle launched herself at him before the elevator arrived, knocking the air out of him with an exaggerated _oof_ , wrapped her arms tightly around him. He squeezed back just as tight. When the elevator announced its arrival, he sighed, kissed her on the cheek and pried himself loose.

“See you tonight,” he said, walking backwards into the elevator.

“See ya. Dodo.”

Belle waved at him until the elevator doors shut, and then she stood there for a while, smiling, feeling warm. She hadn’t told him she’d missed him, but that was alright. She could do that tonight. She might even text him that, but then she’d have to do it quickly. She didn’t want to wake him later. Would he have slept when she got off work?

Oh. Right. Work.

Slowly, Belle turned around and stared at the doors leading into the office. The smile on her face faded away and was replaced with a blank look as the gears in her brain began to spin. What was she feeling, now?

Some people in there would think they had been right about them all along; Belle wasn’t so naive to think her friendship with Gold had gone unnoticed or unquestioned. But would they think her a liar for claiming they were just friends? Or would they think this was some grand declaration on his part, their dramatic first kiss? And if they thought that, would they think her naive for looking so shocked?

She couldn’t figure it out just standing there. Did it even matter? She had to go back in, anyway.

She took a deep breath and sighed out the nerves, then swiped her keycard over the reader. Holding her head high, smiling a little smile, Belle walked past the desks she had jogged past not ten minutes ago, and noticed to her relief that no-one seemed to be staring. Life had carried on. Phones were ringing, people were chatting, typing away, slurping coffee.

On her desk lay the manuscript she’d been trying to slog through. Her pen, without its little cap, lay at the ready. Belle sat down, puffed up her cheeks, blew out a sigh and poked her cheap plastic mouse to bring her computer screen back to life. No new e-mails, at least. That was good.

_Alright then_ , she thought to herself as she picked up her pen and clumsily tried to twirl it between her fingers. Back to work. If only she could remember where in the story she’d left off. Who were these characters? Had the dashing buccaneer who rescued the feisty nobleman’s daughter from drowning been blond all along, or was this a different dashing buccaneer?

Belle frowned when she realized she was going to have to go back a few pages to give the hopeful author a fair chance -

Then damn near screamed when from under the empty desk opposite hers appeared the part-time IT guy _so_ suddenly it was as if he’d been shot straight up out of a rabbit hole.

“Jefferson!” she gasped, clutching her chest. “Christ!”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” he replied with a great big grin, settling on her absent colleague’s chair and angling the computer monitor towards him. “Got a bit of a mess to fix, here. Again.”

Belle waved away his apology with a shaky smile as her heart slowed back down to its usual pace. Probably the only person in the office who hadn’t witnessed her little moment with Gold.

“They do keep you busy, don’t they?”

Jefferson sighed and raised his brow in mild exasperation. “I’m pretty sure everyone can see the downtime schedule. I’m not sure why this guy goes all reverse IT MacGyver every time the database is down for maintenance.”

Belle giggled softly. “Did he unplug anything?”

“That was my first guess. He plugged everything back in if he did.”

“Well, good luck,” said Belle with a smile, picking up the pen she’d dropped in her shock.

With a cheery, “Thanks!” Jefferson began to click and type his way through what Belle could only imagine was a terrific mess she was glad she didn’t have to deal with.

Back to the buccaneer and the nobleman’s daughter, then. Well, buccaneers. Plural. Turned out he had a twin brother, just as dashing, but a little rougher around the edges. Just as she was about to draw a great big question mark in the corner of the page - no real reason, just to feel productive - Jefferson leaned to the left so he could make eye contact from behind the monitor and piped up:

“I thought he was about to _An Officer and a Gentleman_ you.”

“Wait, wha- …” Belle’s eyes went wide in realization. “Oh. You… saw that.”

“Yup. Sorry.”

Ah well. What difference did one more witness make?

“It’s alright,” sighed Belle with a resigned little smile, dropping her pen again and sitting back in her chair. “We weren’t that obnoxious, though, right? Cause I remember that scene, and -”

“Yeah, no, don’t worry,” he cut in, shaking his head and waving his hand to dismiss her concern. “The kiss was very PG 13.”

“Phew!”

“Not at all like Richard Gere and whatsherface channeling two amorous Hungry Hungry Hippos.”

Belle sputtered a sudden burst of giggles into her hand and collapsed to her desk, laughing out all of the pent up tension and uncertainty and worry and embarrassment and everything she had no use for in her mind.

And when she sat back up and filled all that beautiful new space she’d freed up in her chest with a deep breath, she smiled at Jefferson and declared, “My guy’s got better hair, anyway.”

…

Way better hair, Belle thought quietly to herself as he opened the door that evening and gave her a slow smile.

“Belle. Hey.”

He looked so much better now. His hair was shiny and soft looking, curling slightly over the collar on his dark blue shirt. His shirt was unbuttoned just enough to distract her from returning his greeting for a moment, her eyes drawn like magnets to the triangle of skin normally hidden behind two layers of fabric at least.

“Yeah, hi!” she finally managed as he stepped aside to let her through the door. “Did you sleep?”

“Mm. Showered, too.” That explained the extra fluffy hair. “Tea?” he asked, walking slowly backwards towards the kitchen, pointing over his shoulder. “I’ve already put the kettle on.”

She could hear the copper kettle rumbling and bubbling on the stove in the kitchen.

“Yeah! Thanks!”

When he gave a nod and turned around, Belle did the same and wandered up to the glass wall of windows to admire the sunset. It was coloring the town to look as warm as it had been all day. Now the sky was yellow, turning slowly orange and pink. She knew the glass sliding door leading to the balcony in his bedroom was open because he’d left his bedroom door open to let the breeze through. Smelled citrusy, like always.

It wasn’t as if they couldn’t chat while he was in the kitchen and she was over by the windows. If that elephant hadn’t made itself comfortable in the corner of the room upon her entrance, he would have asked about work already, but he already knew what the most interesting part of her day had been. No need to ask.

So Belle sat down on the leather sofa and waited in silence, stared at the pastel clouds passing slowly by, and tapped a rhythm on her bare thigh with her fingers. He turned off the stove just as the kettle began to whistle, and when she heard his footsteps come towards her, for some reason, her heart began to beat a little faster.

“So,” he sighed, putting their steaming cups of tea down on the coffee table.

“So,” she repeated.

When he sat down next to her, Belle swallowed her heart back down and gave him a smile. He looked a little nervous too, his eyes fluttering carefully over her face. She couldn’t help but think that they could use some wine, the pair of them. There had been wine involved every time they kissed, so far.

Well. Nearly every time. 

“I want to apologize again for earlier,” he said, finally. “It was thoughtless of me to embarrass you like that.”

“Oh, it’s… It’s…”

It was what? She still hadn’t figured it out.

“You don’t have to say it’s fine, Belle. I embarrassed you in front of your colleagues, and -”

“Half of them aren’t even my colleagues. We share the floor with -”

“With two different customer service departments, I know. It doesn’t matter. I made a scene.”

“Alright,” she said quietly. “Little awkward, maybe. Or fine - embarrassing. But the embarrassing thing wasn’t the fact that it was you. I think you think it was, and it’s not. You’re not.”

The deep creases in his forehead smoothed away and left him looking a lot less like he wanted to strangle himself. She’d found the right thing to say, and she _meant_ it, Belle realized to her own relief. She’d figured out what she’d been trying to figure out ever since he left her standing alone in front of the elevators, and it was nothing to worry about. In fact, now that she’d pinned it down and named it ‘awkward’, it could go and slink off and leave her to feel only the things she wanted to feel.

Like that tingle in the pit of her stomach when he licked his lips before breaking eye contact and reaching for his cup of tea.

“Did anyone say anything?” he asked putting his cup up to his mouth to gently blow into it.

Belle smiled and snorted a little laugh. “The IT guy thought you were gonna, and I quote: _An Officer and a Gentleman_ me.”

“Pick you up?” he blurted, eyes wide as his teacup. “Did he not notice the limp?”

Belle giggled and shrugged. “I don’t think people were paying that much attention to that, to be honest.”

He grew quiet again, his smile fading slowly. “But that’s all?” he asked after a moment of silence. “You didn’t have to explain anything to anyone?”

Belle shook her head a little. “Weaseled out of it.”

That wasn’t exactly true. She hadn’t had to do any weaseling at all. Apart from Jefferson, no-one had brought it up all day. She suspected everyone had been too impressed by the state of him to even dare. His exit was very dramatic, after all. Polite secondhand embarrassment, maybe.

“That’s something, at least,” he mumbled.

Belle nodded in agreement and reached for her own tea.

“Belle?”

“Hm?”

“Will you please accept my apology, now? You’re not going to convince me I didn’t fuck up today.”

“Oh, my God,” Belle groaned, rolling her eyes and shooting him a lazy grin. “Alright. Fine. Apology _explicitly_ accepted. Happy now?”

He smiled, nodded, and together they sat and sipped and slurped in relative silence for a while, watching the yellow sky turn slowly darker.

So this was it, then. The talk. Off to a pretty okay start, except the start had now officially ended, and Belle wished she’d prepared for this, somehow. Maybe made up a checklist of subjects they needed to tackle, thoughts and expectations they needed to share. But preparation was a habit that Belle had never really managed to foster, and it was a bit early to break out the wine now, wasn’t it?

Unless _he_ was about to pull out that checklist, they’d just have to improvise. That, Belle thought to herself with a brave little smile, she could do.

“If they ask me on Monday,” she began, swirling the liquid in her teacup absently, “about me and you, I mean, what do you think I should tell them?”

He held his cup in his lap now, made it look small in his large hands. His thumb moved nervously over the rim. “You can tell them anything you like, Belle. You can tell them nothing at all, if that’s what you want. It’s my fault you’d even have to. It’s up to you.”

“No, I mean -”

She stopped abruptly when she began to understand that his answer wasn’t wrong, exactly. Her question just wasn’t very right. Maybe even a little dishonest.

“That’s not really what I’m asking,” she laughed softly. “I guess I just… I’m curious about us, too.”

He looked up at her now, eyes open wide in a look of innocence.

“But if I don’t know, maybe it’s not fair of me to ask you.”

“Asking’s fair,” he said, shaking his head a little bit. “I just don’t know if I know the answer.”

They could do this. She knew it. Prepared or not. The happy glow in her chest told her so.

“We could try and figure it out together,” she suggested, making it sound like a question. And if they couldn’t figure out what it was, then at least they could try and talk about what they wanted it to be. Right?

But they’d need wine for that.

It was then that her stomach chimed in with its own demands, gurgling and growling so loudly Belle couldn’t help but look down in mild surprise. Gold chuckled and nodded towards her stomach with a grin.

“Shall we give it a try over pizza?”

“Thai?”

He bit his lip for a moment, narrowed his eyes and made a counteroffer. “Chinese?”

“Oh, alright then,” she sighed, putting on a defeated look that probably didn’t fool him one second.

It was his turn to pick, anyway.

The lights went on when the sun set lower, making the sleek room and its cool colors appear much, much warmer. The lemony scent had been replaced with the delicious smells of their regular orders from their favorite Chinese place, the silence mercilessly banned with a bit of help from the little radio standing on the kitchen counter. They’d ordered far too much food, as per usual; his dining table look like an improvised take-away banquet. They’d had to rearrange everything when Belle kept having to stretch her neck to make eye contact over the wall of boxes, but now everything was alright. Comfortable. Cozy.

Belle poked at her fried rice with her fork while he made her look lazy and uncultured by comparison, handling his chopsticks as deftly as he was. The bottle had been uncorked, their glasses filled and sipped at already, and when she felt a familiar heat crawl up her neck courtesy of the wine, she bravely began, “We’re not dating right now, are we? Technically? Cause we’re not going on dates. We’re just doing what we always do.”

When he looked up, he was wide-eyed and chewing. She probably could have timed that better, she admitted to herself, but at least the silence wasn’t that awkward now with the radio playing quietly in the background. She was watching him so closely, though, that she nearly missed her mouth when she shoveled a forkful of rice in there. A few rice grains fell into her lap, but that was alright. Wasn’t her favorite skirt.

“Well,” he replied, finally done with chewing. “I suppose technically, we’re not. But…”

“But we’re kissing.”

When he gave a little nod and breathed a soft, “Yes,” that strange feeling that had taken her by surprise the night before washed over her again. The fractured glimpses of her dream were already faded from her memory, but the feeling wasn’t quite as far away. She could still remember the feeling. That knot in her gut. Baseless jealousy.

“I’d hate it if you kissed anyone else.”

His chopsticks stopped and hovered over his chow mein abruptly. Belle held her breath and waited for something. A reply. A smile. Laughter, maybe, because she knew her choice of words was childish, and it was cheesy, but she couldn’t think of another way to make him understand what she was feeling. And if she couldn’t do that, then she couldn’t find out if he felt the same, so Belle had no choice but to trust those small words to carry all that meaning, even if it was a little silly.

Meanwhile, the vulnerable look of hope in his dark eyes had distracted her from her food completely, and she couldn’t care less about finishing her plate anymore. Still she poked at a piece of egg - she guessed by its consistency - with her fork. Just to help the radio with its important little task of keeping the silence away.

“I don’t want to kiss anyone else, Belle,” he finally spoke.

His words made her smile, made her sigh out far more air than she thought she’d been holding. She wanted to reach over their improvised feast to grab his hand, but there was no way to do that without knocking something over. Her face was getting warmer than the wine was to blame for, and the urge to joke about their limited terminology was strong, but she knew she had to hold on a little longer before they could fall back into their old patterns.

“So we’re kissing exclusively.”

He was the one to break the tension with a short burst of laughter that made his eyes twinkle and her stomach flutter.

“Yeah, alright,” he said, laughter just underneath the surface of his textured voice. “I like that.”

“And we don’t want to stop and go back to not kissing.”

“I d- … We don’t.”

“Maybe we even want to do the opposite of stopping.”

He raised a single eyebrow, curled his lips up into a playful smirk. “Starting?”

“No!” she snorted, rolling her eyes. “I meant, if just hanging out and kissing and not wanting to kiss other people turned into something more after a while, like maybe into something that doesn’t take forever to describe, that would be…”

She waited for him to fill in the blank.

“Lovely.”

Well, she hadn’t expected _that_ , and there really was no stopping the giggle his surprisingly sweet phrasing had lured out.

“I’m not entirely sure you’re in any position to laugh at me, _Ms Kissing Exclusively_ ,” he growled, nevertheless turning a charming shade of pink. 

“I can’t help it! That was really cute!”

He wrestled down a smirk, mumbled something about hypocrisy, and pretended to be interested in his food again all of the sudden. But his eyes were still full of laughter, and his blush was only getting worse. Or better, depending on your perspective on things.

“Still cute,” she sang quietly, brow raised and grinning wide as she finally caught that piece of fried egg on her fork. “ _Lovely._ ”

He closed his eyes and laughed silently up at the ceiling in despair.

It took them a while to clear the table after dinner, since they’d made such a mess of it. The leftovers Belle would be taking home that night now stood on the bottom shelf in his refrigerator. His half of the leftovers on the shelf above.

It really was going well, this talk of theirs, Belle felt. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Not in a bad way, at least. He didn’t mind it when she teased him, did he? Even when he grumbled and growled, he was always smiling. Always. If not his mouth, then his eyes, or his voice. No, the most difficult part of it so far had been the search for words that meant enough but not too much.

“I should have googled it,” Belle thought aloud as she took a dish towel to the wet plate he’d just handed her.

“Googled what?”

He’d rolled up his sleeves to do the dishes, so Belle was understandably distracted and had to make a concentrated effort to tear her eyes away from his hands under the running water to look up at him.

“Oh, just, y’know, how to talk about this. I mean, I think we’re doing alright, but it could have helped.”

“You’re not kidding, are you?” he said, his mouth half pulled up into an amused smirk. “You really would have googled it.”

“I still could! I’ve got my phone with me.”

He scrunched up his nose and handed her another plate to dry.

“Right,” Belle huffed. “Your face just yelled no, loud and clear.”

“Well, what would you even look for?” he sighed, attacking the fork she’d been using with his yellow and green sponge.

“What, like, what search terms would I use?”

He nodded, handed her the wet fork to dry and reunited himself with his glass of wine while Belle pursed her lips and gave it some thought. She rubbed the fork slowly and methodically and began to smirk to herself. This could be a nice little opportunity to make him squirm.

“What?” He drew out the word, made it sound like a warning, watched her with narrowed eyes as he leaned back against the refrigerator all cool and collected, his glass close to his lips.

He was begging for it.

“Might want to put down your glass,” she lilted as she put the fork back in the cutlery drawer, not even bothering to hide her mischievous grin.

“Why would I do that?” he huffed.

Belle bit her lip, and with both eyebrows raised and with as much meaning in her voice as she could manage, gave him his answer.

“Friends to lovers.”

His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open, and he wasn’t quick enough to turn and hide his shock. Belle burst out into laughter, throwing her head back.

“Brilliant!” she laughed while he groaned and turned away. “I _knew_ you couldn’t handle that word!”

“I can handle the bloody word just fine!” he argued as he walked away and towards the sofa.

Belle followed him, pausing behind the sofa to step out of her heels. She kicked them somewhere slightly less in the way, knowing he’d complain if she didn’t. He sat down with a groan and then reached to put his glass on the coffee table.

“Did you really take that nap?” she teased. “You sound awfully grumpy right now.”

“Yes. And I didn’t drop my glass.”

Belle smiled fondly at the back of his head. She couldn’t see from here, but if voices could pout, his would be out-moping that of a toddler denied a treat. Suddenly she realized she’d forgotten her own glass on the kitchen counter, but that was alright. She stepped closer until her thighs touched the back of the sofa and put her hands on his shoulders. He jumped, just a little bit, but when he looked up and saw her smiling down at him, he slowly closed and opened his eyes again like a cat, and melted under her touch. He smiled back.

“I missed you,” she said, leaning down, running her hands down his chest, nudging the shell of his ear with her nose.

“I’ve missed you too.”

She sighed (or purred, or something in between) and wrapped her arms around him as best she could from where she was standing, resting her chin on his shoulder. His hands came up and stroked the bare skin of her arms crossed over his chest, and that was it. Enough talking. She lifted herself up to sit on the backrest first, brought up her legs too and then slid straight down to land next to him with a thud and a giggle. That was fun, actually.

As she clambered upright and curled her legs up under her body, Belle saw questions in his sleepy eyes, and laughter, but something else too.

“A lot,” she said, reaching out to touch his hair, watching her fingers slide through. “And I should go and let you get some rest, but we haven’t kissed in a while.”

“Belle…”

She was starting to love the way he said her name for no reason. His eyes drifted to her lips. She slid closer, closer until they were touching as much as they could without her sitting in his lap. Wait, no, that wasn’t true. She moved her legs over his thigh, grabbed hold of the back of the sofa for purchase and scooted even closer. He put an arm around her shoulder, his other hand on her thigh, and _now_ they were touching as much as they could without her sitting in his lap.

“I shouldn’t have gone,” he murmured, sliding his fingers slowly through the hair at the nape of her neck. Belle had worn her hair up all day. She was glad she’d let it down after work.

“I know I keep making fun of you for working all the time, but I know you have a job to do.”

His eyes were on her lips now, and God, and he was so kissable with his hair so soft and his voice so deep and gruff from sleep. There were far fewer layers between them without the rest of his suit. He was warm, and she was warm, and she was getting warmer.

“No. I shouldn’t have gone.”

And then he kissed her. Very softly, as if to make up for the other kiss earlier that day. She touched his cheek, kissed him back, and decided that he had a point. He shouldn’t have gone. He should have stayed there with her, kiss her every night, just like this, with their hands in each other’s hair, feeling skin, grabbing shoulders, touching thighs.

“But I should go,” she breathed in between two kisses. Cause if she stayed, then she’d _stay_.

He growled softly in displeasure but gave an understanding nod. Before he let her go, he kissed a sensitive spot just underneath her ear that drew out a little mewl and made her squirm.

“Ticklish?” he asked, grinning like the devil.

Belle made her eyes small and put her hand on his thigh, sliding slowly up and staring him down until his eyes went wide and he caught her wrist in his hand just in time.

She flashed a grin she knew could only ever be half as devilish as his. “Ticklish?”

He laughed deep and pulled her into his lap for a last kiss, wrapping his arms around her waist and squeezing tight. One last chance to mess up his hair for the night, Belle thought as she dug her fingers in there and tilted his head to kiss him better. A long kiss, soft as well as firm, with his hands splayed possessively against her back. Felt like not an inch of her back went untouched, and she couldn’t think of a better feeling in the world.

“You know,” she began as she climbed out of his lap and to her feet, holding out her hands for him to take, “we’d only have to go on one date to be able to say we’re dating.”

He smiled, let her help him up, gave her hands a squeeze before letting go. “Is that how it works?”

Belle gave a lopsided smile and shrugged. “I say it is. That was a hint, by the way.”

“Very subtle. Can I take you out to dinner, then? Tomorrow?”

Belle crinkled her nose and cocked her head to the side. “Hm, I don’t know,” she teased. “I do have a lot of leftovers now, don’t I?” She nodded towards his fridge.

“Leave them here. I’ll make them disappear,” he replied in a deeper voice, slowly walking her backwards towards the door with his hands on her hips.

“Fine. Can I take my shoes with me, though?”

He stopped and frowned, lips parted for a confused sound that never actually made it out of his throat. Belle huffed out a laugh and nodded towards her bare feet, then at the shoes she’d half kicked under the sofa, and he was muttering apologies and rushing over to fetch them before she could stop him.

“Sorry,” he laughed, placing her heels in front of her, letting her pull him back up again. “You’re just as much trouble without those. Didn’t notice you’d gotten weer.”

She stepped into her heels, leaning on his shoulder for balance.

“You just get some rest and pick me up after seven,” said Belle, giving him a calm, meaningful smile. “I’ll show you trouble.”


	6. A Party Accidentally Crashed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her date cancels, but Belle finds something else to do, and it involves champagne.

_Friday works for me but can’t stay late, just dinner_

Maybe she wasn’t caffeinated enough to rely on her reading comprehension just yet that morning, but Belle couldn’t for the life of her figure out whether that text was presumptuous or not. By the time she gave up and decided on a simple ‘okay, it’s a date’ to text back, she looked up from her phone and saw the elevator closing. Without her in it. She broke out into a jog, clutching her bag close by her side. She wouldn’t call out, although the thought did occur to her, but then she didn’t have to.

Because a single dark eye caught hers from inside the elevator, just in time. One second later, the doors opened to reveal Mr Gold and his serious morning face. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was a long stern line. As usual, Belle answered his gloom with a grin.

“ _Thank_ you! Good morning!” she sang as she joined him inside, pleased that coincidence and timing had conspired for him to return that favor after all those weeks.

“Morning.”

It wasn’t a good one, and a ‘you’re welcome’ would have been the cherry on the cake, but still. Progress. Belle kept up her smile until her phone buzzed in her hand. Gaston again, telling her to have a nice day. While she typed her quick reply, the doors closed.

“Is it really such torture for you?” sounded Mr Gold’s diluted accent.

Belle snapped her head up and found him literally looking down his nose at the phone in her hands.

“Excuse me?”

The elevator began its long journey up with a jolt.

“Going one second without some form of communication,” he clarified with a subtle nod at her phone.

Belle made her eyes small in suspicion and replied, “Uh, no. I think I’m fine,” making it sound like a question.

Mr Gold hummed a thoughtful noise and stared straight ahead at the closed doors.

“Thought it might explain why you’re in the habit of bothering strangers in elevators.”

She quirked an eyebrow and slipped her phone back into her bag, forgetting about her scheduled date entirely. This conversation was heaps more interesting.

“It’s not a habit,” said Belle, intrigued now. “I don’t just bother any stranger in any elevator.”

“I wonder what it is you’re trying to accomplish, then.” His voice was deep and ostensibly uninterested.

“You seem fun,” she explained with a shrug. “I’m trying to make an interesting friend, that’s all.”

Mr Gold huffed, put on a wry smile - not at her, but at the elevator doors - and in a strangely higher voice that she hadn’t expected to come out of his mouth at _all_ , he lilted, “I make a much better enemy, dearie.”

Said the man she suddenly realized had pushed her floor button for her! Belle burst out laughing, louder still when his normally oh so illegible mask cracked and revealed a very, very confused man underneath.

“I’m afraid I’m entirely serious,” he mumbled, his voice deep again, eyebrows close together as his his eyes flitted over her face for a clue.

The man she was looking at in that moment - a man both confused and quietly amused - didn’t look to her like he ever could be serious. But Belle was feeling compassionate, and traded in her bubbling laughter for a pleased smile instead.

“Yeah, we’ll see!”

She wished the building was about twice as high when the elevator came to a halt. The doors opened to her floor, and she backed out, hugging her bag to her chest.

“Have a lovely day, Mr Gold.”

The dramatic Mr Gold stared her down with a frown until the elevator doors were almost closed. But in that very last gap, right before she was about to turn and walk off, he gave her an unexpected nod and a minuscule smirk, like an actor delivering an aside to the audience. Belle gasped.

Then the doors closed, as did her shocked mouth. When the mechanical insides of the elevator hummed and whirred and moved again, Belle smiled and bit her lip. Yes. Definite progress, she decided as she swiped her keycard and bumped the door open with her shoulder and then her hip.

She felt much less lonely now than she did when she first started working in this cold glass giant of a building, all thanks to those little morning chats with Mr Gold. She hadn’t quite snagged herself that interesting lunch buddy just yet, but she would. Soon.

…

Belle stomped into the elevator late Friday evening and blindly hit a button. She knew better, she really did, but still she grabbed her phone and subjected herself to Gaston’s last text message yet again.

_But you can come if you like, beautiful_

She rolled her eyes and let her phone drop back into her bag. One of the least enthusiastic quasi-invitations Belle had ever received in her entire life, honestly. Second only to that time the class bully’s mom forced him to invite the entire class to his birthday party - or else no party at all. That kid had made a six-year-old Belle feel only marginally less welcome when he slammed the invitation down on her desk than she did right now.

So. Date postponed. Belle annoyed. She’d changed out of her date dress and headed back to the office when she got the news. It was no use trying to relax when the tension in her muscles refused to go away as if it had a right to be there, and every time she passed a reflective surface in her apartment she had to see her sullen face scowling back at her. No, her restless fingers itched to strike through whole paragraphs with a bright red pen. Nothing else would do. It might be therapeutic, and if it wasn’t, then it at least it would be productive.

But she’d never been in the building this late before, and the unexpected solitude was oddly calming. Sounds were muffled, and in the lobby the lights were dimmer than they usually were. Halfway up the building, her shoulders lost some of that rock hardness, and with it went a good chunk of her urge to channel her frustration into something work-related. Be silly to leave without what she came for, though, Belle thought as the elevator finally halted and opened its doors.

A strange sight awaited her when she stepped out. The double doors leading into the main office space were not only unlocked, they were wide open. Much more baffling was the fact that this wasn’t her floor at all, unless someone had painted the walls in the hall black after she left work that afternoon.

She wasn’t as alone as she thought she was, either.

A party, looked like. Out of the room drifted the sounds of piano music and a busy buzz as people in suits and cocktail dresses inside talked and laughed. To her right, a large white decal on the stairwell door read ’41’. Off by a couple of floors. She must have just pressed the wrong floor button; no-one was waiting to use the elevator. It was a silly mistake easily rectified, but for some odd reason, Belle wasn’t really in a hurry to do that.

One curious step led to another, and the moment she crossed the invisible line into the main office space, she was greeted by a chirpy young man wearing a tidy bow tie.

“Good evening. Champagne, ma’am?” the smiley waiter asked, presenting her with a silver platter on which he was managing to balance six or seven glasses, at least.

“Oh, um…”

Her eyes big, Belle admired the pretty golden bubbles streaming up in ribbons from the stems of the champagne flutes. She flickered a cheeky grin. Why not? If her date wasn’t going to treat her tonight, she would just have to do it herself. She could wander around, find a quiet corner to lurk in, have a nice glass of champagne and people-watch for a bit, couldn’t she? It’d be like an adventure.

Yes. An adventure. One she was sorely underdressed for, but still.

She reached out and made to close her fingers around the stem of a glass when suddenly she spotted someone familiar just a few paces away. She froze in place and gaped. Long hair, dark eyes, black suit, cane in hand - it was Mr Gold. He was being talked at by a man in a blue suit and a woman in a black dress, but he wasn’t paying any attention to them. He was staring at _her_ , one eyebrow slowly lifting.

Was that a challenge?

“Ma’am?” prodded the patient waiter.

Taking some inspiration from her late grandmother's cat, Celia, Belle stared boldly back and ( _un_ like her furry inspiration, who would have calmly knocked the whole lot to the floor) took a glass, nodded thanks to the waiter and then looked back at Mr Gold with her brow raised.

The waiter floated off.

Belle’s heart beat fast in her chest, waiting for some sort of reaction that when it came - a devilish grin, a silent approval of her brazen party crashing - made her giggle under her breath.

She was right about him. He _was_ fun.

When his companions glanced over their shoulders to see what was distracting him from their conversation, Mr Gold walked away from them both. They didn’t seem that surprised when they found him missing. The man shrugged, put his hand on the woman’s back, and walked them towards a small group of people chatting by the windows on the other side of the room.

Why didn’t he come up to her? Wasn’t he curious as to why she was there, at least? Belle wanted to explain that she’d merely stumbled in by accident, frustrated and desperate for distraction. But when she craned her neck and lifted herself on the tips of her toes just a bit to try and see over everyone’s heads, she couldn’t spot the strange Mr Gold anywhere.

But that was alright, thought Belle, falling back down on her heels with a little bounce. He clearly didn’t mind her being there, and - she sipped from her champagne, smiled and calmly cast a look around the room with its dark grey carpet and pristine white walls - she could keep herself entertained on this adventure for a while. She’d find him along the way.

Belle ambled slowly around the cleared office floor for a few minutes, keeping close to the walls, admiring all the well-dressed, important looking people and their shiny watches and jewelry. The catering staff weaved elegantly through the crowd and carried silver platters with all sorts of pretty food. Even though she’d wandered behind a column, the same waiter from before found her and offered her a tiny triangle of bread. Upon further inspection, it was a glorified mini ham sandwich, with fancy cured ham.

“Thank you!”

Though she probably could have stuffed all of it in her mouth all at once, Belle very sensibly decided to start with half. Well, two thirds.

“They’re good, aren’t they?”

“Mmf!”

She whipped around, nearly spilling her champagne. _There_ he was, the smirking sneak! How on earth had he managed to creep up on her? Where had he come from? And had he timed his reappearance to try and give her a heart attack specifically when she had her mouth full?

“Relax,” he muttered, laughter mixed in with his deep conspiratorial tone. “You’re hardly trespassing.”

He was gone again before she could even swallow, leaving her to recover from her minor heart attack with huge eyes and a hint of disappointment. Why was that man so difficult to get a hold of outside of a bloody elevator? All she wanted was to talk to him about something other than the weather and the books she was reading, to dispel a bit more of that mystery that made him so intimidating at first glance. Maybe she could even get him to admit that he didn’t _mind_ her, the way his tacit approval of her presence here where she was not supposed to be clearly showed. They were practically neighbors; did it not make sense to try and be friends?

Belle passed a waitress and accepted a little round toast with caviar. She tried it, decided she didn’t like caviar, grimaced through the rest of it, then walked towards the wall of windows to see if the view was very different from her office. But she never made it.

“Hello there.”

A tall young man with his blond hair slicked back and a toothy grin had slid between her and that nice little open spot by the windows she’d been eying. He’d caught her by surprise, and her stomach lurched. Was she about to be unmasked?

“Oh, uh, h-hi,” she stammered, straightening her spine and lifting her chin a bit, trying to look as if she truly believed she belonged here.

“My name’s Jim,” said the man, holding out his hand for her to shake. His voice was loud and his hands were big. “What’s yours?”

“I’m…”

Belle gawped for a moment until she realized it wasn’t very inconspicuous of her to let the man’s hand hover like that. She reached out, shook it, and with her heart beating all the way up in her throat, made a decision she wasn’t sure was wise.

“Lacey. I’m Lacey.”

“Lacey! Lovely name for a lovely woman!”

Belle snapped her hand back before he could bring it up to his lips. One of those, then. Well, at least he hadn’t sniffed her out as an intruder. She took a demonstratively large sip from her champagne and put on a fake smile to match the fake name she was suddenly glad she’d given him.

“Yeah, thanks. Jim’s… a nice name.”

“British, too! Excellent!”

She tried not to cringe, disguised her grimace as a smile. “Australian, but thanks.”

“So, what do you do, sweetheart?” asked the sentient cloud of cologne, getting smarmier by the second. “You one of Gold’s minions? You’re not ours, are you? Cause I definitely would have remembered you.”

“I… work for Mr Gold, yes.”

He shuffled a little closer. Belle took a step back.

“HR,” he guessed, nodding as if he’d just said something very sage.

She narrowed her eyes and decided on a firm but utterly mendacious, “No. Legal.”

“ _Legal?_ Well, how about that!”

He was definitely leaning in too close now, never mind the nonsense coming out of his mouth. She was about to duck under his arm and make a swift exit with a flimsy excuse when, in between Jim’s looming body and hers, appeared a flash of gold. Before she knew it, a dumbstruck Jim was nudged away to a much more tolerable distance - by Mr Gold’s cane.

“Terribly sorry to interrupt, John. Howard’s been looking for you. Might want to scurry over.”

Belle’s mouth dropped open, but she caught herself just in time to put on a poker face and square her shoulders.

“My name’s Jim,” he argued weakly, taking a step back.

“That’s nice. Hurry along now.” Mr Gold put the tip of his cane back on the floor and flashed a cold parting smile.

“Nice meeting you, Lacey,” said the young man as he stumbled back, his wary gaze glued to the handle of Mr Gold’s cane.

Belle stood alongside him as they watched Jim disappear around a corner, hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped. Then, with a little sigh of both relief and maybe just a little bit of awe, she turned to look at Mr Gold’s face in profile. His eyes were small and his jaw clenched as he stared holes into the fleeing man’s back.

“My apologies, Ms French.”

“No, I… Thank you.”

“No matter.” He gave a quick, crooked little smirk. “ _Lacey._ ”

Belle’s face flushed red. She opened her mouth to defend herself, but he was off again before she could get the words out.

“Oh, come on,” she complained under her breath as her slippery fish swam up to another group of people.

It would be rude to interrupt his conversations, and it would be creepy if she were caught following him around waiting for an opportunity to talk to him, but what if no-one caught her? Not creepy then, right? Leaning against a table pushed up against the wall, Belle sipped from her glass and watched as Mr Gold put his hand on the shoulder of a burly bald man. He leaned in close, muttered something. The man nodded and headed towards Jim, who, in the mean time, had found another poor woman to bother on the other side of the room. That was Howard then, was it, that big bald guy?

When she looked back at Mr Gold, he’d already moved on. He wasn’t quite out of her sight just yet, and it didn’t look like he was in a hurry to talk to anyone else, so Belle put her empty glass of champagne on the table and followed him. He moved behind people, behind columns, and turned the corner into a hallway where some of the desks had been temporarily relocated for the party, lined up against the wall. She hoped for a terrifying few seconds that she wasn’t following him into the men’s room, but then that worry floated away when he stopped, leaned against the wall in between two empty desks, and stayed there to stare out of the window.

This was her chance. He was so lost in his thoughts that when he finally noticed her approach, his shoulders jumped a little. The naked look of surprise was new, too. No smug smirk, no scowl. No mask at all for a few seconds at least, but then he folded his face into a cold look.

“Gold!” a deep voice boomed right next to her ear. She was overtaken by a tall man with white hair walking in great big strides Belle could never hope to match. “I’ve been looking for you!”

“Howard. Delightful.”

It was his deadpan tone that stopped Belle from turning back in defeat, but it was the quick helpless glance he sent her before the taller man eclipsed him that made her perk up like an antelope hearing a lion drop a pin on the other side of the savannah. She filled from top to bottom with determination, straightened her back and her shoulders and put on a brave smile. There was a favor she could return, and she wasn’t going to let the chance pass her by.

“Gold, my man, we have to discuss these numbers you -”

“Ah, excuse me!” Belle piped up, joining the two men at the desk. “Can I interrupt for a moment?”

“Yes, of course,” said Howard when Mr Gold took a little long to pick his jaw up from the floor and respond.

“Mr Gold,” she began, trying to keep a straight face, “I have news about that thing you asked me to look into. It’s quite urgent.”

His eyes went wide. “Yes! Right! The thing, yes. Good. I’ve been waiting for that.”

It was very difficult not to succumb to the giggles now that he was in on it, but somehow, she was managing.

“Can it wait long enough for an introduction, Gold?” he grumbled, looking a little affronted.

“Of course, of course. This is Lacey.”

“From legal,” added Belle.

“Lacey, Howard. Howard, Lacey. Now, this is important stuff, I’m afraid. Important, tedious, complicated stuff that’s going to take a while to sort out, so if you would be so kind…”

Belle could barely believe the man in front of her. She’d never seen Mr Gold so animated, and his smile was meant to appease, not to mock or to distance. He was probably good at whatever his job was, but she suspected he would have made quite the actor as well.

“Alright then. I’ll give you a call next week.”

When Belle turned to thank the man and apologize again, she was taken aback by his distrustful look. His eyes were narrow behind his small rectangular glasses, his smile a little unsure. She was terrified, but she forced herself to maintain her smile until he gave a polite nod and walked away.

Her heart was still drumming like mad when Howard disappeared behind a corner. “He was on to me,” she whispered to Gold, eyes still trained on that corner just in case he thought to jump out from behind the wall and catch them conspiring.

“He very likely was. He’s met everyone in legal.”

“Why didn’t you stop me ?” she gasped, whipping around to face him.

He raised an eyebrow. “Should I somehow have predicted you’d jump in declaring your expertise? Mimed at you to pick supply chain analyst instead?”

Her shoulders fell. “Yeah, alright,” she mumbled. “Good point.”

He leaned back against the wall like he did before, the difference being that now he was smiling at the dark city skyline up ahead. “Lacey from legal is nice and alliterative, anyway.”

Belle wanted to laugh, but more than that, she wanted to finally explain herself before he could disappear again, so she held back her laughter and joined him against the wall. She dropped her purse by her feet to illustrate her intent: she was here to stay if he was. The sound, a little thud, made him glance down.

“I accidentally pressed the wrong button in the elevator,” she said, speaking fast at first, and then slower when he made no move to rush off again. “That’s how I ended up here.”

Mr Gold turned his head to give her an amused look. “Mm, and then you accidentally took a glass of champagne.”

Belle shrugged, confessed, “No, that was on purpose.”

A silent chuckle made his shoulders shake just once. Belle grinned proudly.

“I wasn’t aiming to bother you off the job, just so you know,” she added.

“You wouldn’t have succeeded even if you were. Organizing these and showing up is an essential part of the process of buttering important people up, unfortunately, so I’m not truly off the job this evening.”

“You weren’t doing any buttering over here, though,” remarked Belle, her lips curling up in a half smirk.

“I needed a break from buttering.”

She giggled, but then quietened when she noticed that his smile looked a little tired. “Hey, do you want me to go?” she asked, pointing over her shoulder, forgetting for a moment that that was probably not where the exit was.

“You’re not the world’s worst uninvited guest. You can traipse about here all you like for the rest of the evening, though I’m not sure why you would.”

“No, no. I meant, should I leave you alone? I can stop bothering you if you want. You said you needed a break.”

He was silent for a while, scanned her face with dark eyes.

“From buttering people up. Not from being bothered.”

Belle beamed. She could make herself comfortable, then. She lifted herself up onto the short edge of the desk pushed up against the wall, settling comfortably under his curious gaze. They were alone now, and the chatter and laughter sounded a little more distant. The piano music floating through the room was more muffled in this narrower part of the office.

She could have sworn there were a million different things she wanted to ask him about, but as she sat there, bit her lip and tried to recall them, they all escaped her so thoroughly she began to doubt herself. Had she even thought this far ahead?

“Can I ask what do you do for a living?” she asked, preferring the banal to the silence. “You’re in charge, right? But in charge of what?”

“It’s a logistics company.”

Belle blinked. “I know what that word means, but… not in the business sense.”

“I don’t blame you. It’s all very vague and unnecessarily complicated.”

“In layman’s terms, then,” she urged, nodding to encourage him.

Mr Gold pushed himself away from the wall and leaned against the desk opposite the one she was perched on. He groaned a bit as he lifted his weight from his cane and propped the expensive looking thing up in the corner made by the desk and the wall. Belle glanced down at his feet, wondered for a brief moment what the story was.

“In essence, it’s transport and warehousing and the like. We provide those services for other companies.”

“Like, they outsource it to you?”

He confirmed with a nod and gave a wry smile. “Riveting stuff, isn’t it?” His voice dripped with sarcasm.

“I’m sure it’s interesting, really,” said Belle, though she was beginning to suspect that he was being truthful rather than self-deprecating. Without the expensive suits and the swagger, she would never have pegged him for a CEO or anything remotely like that. An artist, maybe. When he only shook his head in denial and didn’t speak, Belle cleared her throat and with it the silence, and offered, “I, uh. I work for the publisher’s two floors down.”

“I know.”

“Wait, how?” she blurted. “It’s a shared floor.”

“You don’t seem nearly miserable enough to be working for either of the customer service departments on that floor.”

Belle rolled her eyes but couldn’t help a chuckle. A quick one, though. The gears in her head were already spinning frantically to try and come up with something else to talk about before he lost interest and wandered off again.

“Are you an editor?” he asked.

Her mouth rounded in a soft _oh_. Belle was grateful and pleasantly surprised that the man who had been so stingy with his words for so long had been the one to nudge the conversation onwards.

“Yeah, I guess I am.”

Mr Gold knitted his eyebrows together and tilted his head back a bit in confusion. “What do you mean, you guess?”

“I don’t know. It’s a small company. Editor feels like such a big word.”

He obviously still didn’t follow her reasoning, but he didn’t protest or ask her to elaborate. Belle was thankful for that. She didn’t know if she could explain properly, anyway.

“Do you enjoy it?” he asked.

“Yeah! Most of the time. There’s two of us for the romance imprint, and then there’s our boss and his people, and they do all the riskier high brow literature stuff. We bring in the money, they bring in the prizes. They try to, anyway.”

She shrugged, offered a small smile and let her shoulders slump. Belle knew he hadn’t asked her all of that, but he didn’t seem to mind her blurting it all out anyway, so she’d only embarrassed herself a teensy bit, there.

“Riskier how?” he asked, holding the edges of the desk and scooting back on it a little - though not as far as Belle had. Her legs were dangling. His feet were still planted firmly on the dark carpet.

“Well, putting a book into print is a huge investment,” she answered, smiling and trying not to giggle at the mental image of his legs dangling to and fro. “There’s production costs, and advances can get crazy if you’re competing with other publishers. Even if we’re sure it’s a great book, there’s no telling if it’s gonna make us any money. Especially with our marketing budget. I mean, we might as well not have one at all.”

Mr Gold was nodding at her, and he _seemed_ to be listening, but Belle couldn’t tell what that creased forehead meant. Confusion? Disbelief? Was he following? Was she babbling? Gaston didn’t really get it when she tried to explain it to him the week before, but then again, she was drunk off her face that night.

“Am I making sense?” she asked. Her voice sounded a little higher than she’d have liked it to sound, so she smiled an embarrassed smile.

“Completely.”

“Yeah?”

“Mm, but why not devote yourself to what sells, then?” he asked, stroking his chin in a gesture of what Belle believed was genuine contemplation. “Is it just the principle of it? A love of literature? It seems a little naive.”

“Yeah, that’s a part of it,” said Belle. “But it’s not really naive, I don’t think. Even if the risky stuff doesn’t sell well at first, there still might be a few literature prizes in it. And that helps make us look better to authors who wouldn’t mind a smaller advance if it means being published by a publisher with some prestige, you know?”

“Oh,” he said, his voice higher and his eyes grown a little bigger. “That does make sense.”

Belle chirped a hopeful, “Yeah?”

When he nodded, she smiled. It was nice, talking about this with someone who seemed interested. Belle was suddenly and incredibly glad that she’d pressed the wrong floor button that evening.

“So the novels you edit are guaranteed to bring in the money you need to afford those risks?”

“Yeah, more or less,” said Belle wagging her head from side to side and crinkling her nose. “Nothing’s ever really guaranteed.”

Like that time they missed the vampire romance bandwagon by a year or so and embarrassed themselves awfully when they tried to catch up. Still made her cringe just thinking about it.

“What kind of romance novels are we talking about, here?”

“Wow,” she giggled, burying her face in her hand for a moment. “Just pick a classic stereotype and -”

He interrupted her with a low muttered, “Waxed chests and kilts on the cover?” and raised a single eyebrow.

“Oh my God!” Belle half gasped, half giggled. “Yes and no. We have to keep the covers pretty tame. The type of authors my boss is after would be turned off by…” She trailed off, fought down a grin, then decided to go with his phrasing “… waxed chests and kilts. I’ve had to edit one or two of those, though.”

“I feel like I have to apologize for that,” he mumbled with a hint of a sheepish smile. “I truly don’t understand the appeal.”

“It’s alright. I like those better than the billowy shirt and scimitar types.”

She stared at his smile for a little too long and then looked down at her hands instead. She’d never read about anyone like him before. The men in the manuscripts she had to read were young, tall, and they had faces that were both smooth and strong, somehow. He wasn’t handsome in the way that all those pirates and and knights and claymore wielding Scotsmen were handsome, but he was. Just not in a simple, straightforward way. It took a little staring, first. Was his wife wandering about here somewhere, she suddenly wondered. Husband, maybe?

“So, why are you here on a Friday night?” asked Mr Gold, putting on a questioning look.

“Oh, I just wanted to take some work home with me.”

He jerked his head back and screwed up his face. “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

“My date canceled at the last minute,” Belle explained, her lip jutting out in a subconscious pout. “I didn’t really know what else to do.”

“At the last minute?”

“Well, I mean, two hours before, but that’s kinda last minute, right?” He nodded. “We were gonna have dinner, and afterwards he was gonna hang out with his friends cause that was scheduled ages ago, but then he realized it was better to just reschedule our thing.”

“I see.”

But Mr Gold looked… well, either skeptical or offended on her behalf, and Belle felt suddenly and strongly compelled to defend Gaston.

“He’s a volunteer firefighter,” she proclaimed, straightening her back and bracing her hands on the edge of the desk like Mr Gold. “I’m sure he just hasn’t seen his friends in a while.”

“Oh!” he replied, his rounded lips fighting against a grin. “Well, now I get it.”

He wasn’t talking about his reason for canceling the date, was he? Belle raised both eyebrows and began to lean towards the likelihood of a husband wandering around the room, or waiting at home, more likely.

“Daft joke about women and firefighters, dearie,” he explained, sounding a little embarrassed.

“Oh. Well.” She leaned in a little bit as if to tell him a secret, even though they weren’t nearly close enough and she was having to grasp the edge of the desk tight in order not to overbalance. “I don’t _mind_ that he’s a firefighter,” she mock-whispered.

Mr Gold leaned back and laughed, which made her laugh in turn.

No, she really didn’t mind that. The drunken kisses she’d shared with Gaston had been nice, and he was cute. He’d made her laugh a lot - not really on purpose, but still - and he seemed nice enough. He laughed at her jokes even though it was clear that sometimes, he didn’t really get them. There was potential there, and dear _God_ did her father ever approve of him, to the point that those two might as well have been dating each other instead.

“What about you?” asked Belle once they were all laughed out, feeling brave now.

“What about me?” Mr Gold countered, and ah, he was putting the mask back on. Belle could tell. There was still some laughter in his eyes, though. He probably didn’t know.

Undeterred, Belle clarified. “Are you married?”

“No.”

She waited with a raised brow and her lips parted in anticipation, but when his steely silence became glaringly intentional, Belle huffed out a laugh.

“Alright, well, thanks for that wealth of information,” she teased.

He shrugged. “I answered your question.”

“Oh, come on! You know when people ask a question, they’re actually asking a lot more sometimes.”

“Like what, on this occasion?”

“Like, if you’re not married, do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend or -”

Mr Gold interrupted her with his deep laughter and threw his head back. “Ah, I see what you’re fishing for, now.”

“I wasn’t presuming!” Belle defended herself, feeling her face grow a little warmer. She probably looked pink, now.

“But you _were_ asking.”

Under his knowing, judging gaze, Belle became a bit smaller. She smiled, shrugged, swayed her feet as they dangled from the desk.

“I guess.”

“Then I’m not telling.”

Like that quick smirk in the elevator earlier that week, the unexpected show of playfulness made Belle gasp, and when she did that, he cracked and laughed at her dramatic expression.

“No, you’re right,” said Belle once she’d gotten over the shock and the giggles, nodding very seriously. “It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“It really doesn’t.”

He looked over his shoulder then - the first time he’d really looked away from her during their talk. Someone had called his name on the other side of the room, and he made some sort of gesture in response. She felt the urgency in her bones, now. Her chance was slipping away. What if the next time she saw him in the elevator, he pretended this hadn’t happened at all?

“Hey,” she said softly, making him face her again. “Before you go butter people up again, I just want to say that I meant what I said in the elevator. That you seem fun. And to be honest - it’s kinda sad, but… I don’t really know anyone in this building except you. And Lacey from legal.”

He snorted, gave her a tiny smile.

“And I eat lunch alone every day,” she confessed, hoping that was enough to make him take pity.

He frowned. “You have your colleagues.”

“They go home and eat there. Really, it’s sad. I’m almost tempted to just eat lunch at my desk and work through my break, and isn’t that the most pathetic thing in the world? I know you’re probably busy a lot of the time, but you have to eat lunch, right? Or do you have those boozy business lunches with other business people every day? Or is that something that only happens on TV? Anyway, we could just have our coffee breaks together if -”

Once again, his laughter cut her short, but it was softer this time, and she knew she’d been babbling anyway, so Belle was fine with it. She bit her lip and waited anxiously for him to speak, watched him as he reached for his cane.

“Fine,” he finally sighed, sliding off the edge of the desk and to his feet.

Her mouth fell open, her eyes went huge, and she _wanted_ to cheer, but she wasn’t quite sure if he was joking or not. She needed to make sure.

“Fine?”

“Fine,” he repeated.

“We can be friends?”

Mr Gold cringed and groaned, shaking his head. “Does it hurt to be that twee, Ms French?” he asked, lips twisted into a crooked smirk.

Every cell in Belle's body was telling her to smile, but she forced her wriggling lips to purse instead and gave a childish shrug. “Less than it hurts you to pretend you don't like it.”


	7. A Date

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Officially dating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hiya. Sorry for taking so long. Thank you for being patient. I hope you like the final chapter. <3

“Hey, can I -”

Ceramic slid over wood with a hollow sound. He’d pushed his bowl towards her without batting an eye. Belle laughed, didn’t blame him one bit for assuming.

“That’s not what…”

When she actually looked down at his offering, however, her voice faded out, her words gone. He hooked a finger on the edge of the bowl, jerked it back just a fraction of an inch - no more - but Belle had already reacted with a sudden feline briskness, reaching out to stab her fork into a prawn after all. She didn’t mind his self-satisfied smirk at her expense. Cheap price to pay for a delicious prawn. So what if it was hooked to a fishing line?

He looked so much more at ease now compared to how she found him at her door earlier, with a bouquet of red roses too massive not to peek out from behind his back, spoiling the surprise. His smiles had been twitchy and his eyes evasive as she chatted away at him. When she was putting away the roses in a champagne bucket for lack of a sufficiently gigantic vase, he’d stuttered something sweet about her hair. Poor sweetheart had to stutter it twice because she couldn’t hear him over the sound of running water in the kitchen the first time.

So it was a good thing she’d insisted on the Thai place they always got their takeout from, Belle felt. She was sure that touch of familiarity helped with the nerves, though they’d never actually sat down and had a meal here. They were surrounded by red and gold - colors that were warm and soothing in these dim lantern lights. The floaty music in the background with its fragile strings and hollow chimes gave them something to smile about. She liked those fake flowers hanging from a basket up against the wall above his head, too. Made him look even more harmless than he was. A floral halo.

“What did you want to say?”

Belle shrugged, felt something behind her ribs flutter at being caught staring. _That_ was new. She wondered if it was it wise to bring up what she had meant to before the coconut prawn distraction, now that his smile looked a lot less like she was holding a gun to his head and ordering him to.

“I forgot,” she lied, returning her attention to her own food. Her pad thai, nearly forgotten right under her nose.

“That good, eh, those prawns?” he teased. “You should have ordered some.”

They had always had their patterns, him and her, she thought to herself with a dreamy grin, prodding her noodles with her fork. Like a boat on a little river carving a curving path, they veered this way and then that, sometimes slowly, sometimes sharp and quick. They joked, they teased, they surrendered, spent a few moments in complete calm together, and started all over again. Never dull, but never so unexpected as to be shocking.

“You can have them all, if… if you like,” he said, his voice suddenly dry and weak.

Confused, Belle looked up and found him a little wider-eyed, not a single trace to be found of his confident smirk. She raised her brow in wonder. _That_ wasn’t really part of the pattern, was it?

“I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

No, that wasn’t part of the pattern at all. It was a glimpse of him as he was back in her apartment earlier, with his red face and his softer voice speaking fewer words. It was the man on the phone all the way over the ocean with fingers so shaky they couldn’t hold on to his phone - apparently. And she was a little bit anxious herself about what they were doing, how they were changing, so she did understand. But throughout all of that tiny turmoil in her own heart, Belle felt an undercurrent of calm and determination that he seemed to be missing.

Even at her most nervous that afternoon. During her search for an outfit he hadn’t seen her in before, to be precise. She’d settled on a dress with the tags still on in the end. If she _had_ worn it before, even without cutting off the tags like the impatient, imperceptive walnut she was sometimes, he would have noticed and pointed it out to her. Discretely, at first, so his conscience was clear to gently mock her for it later. She would have remembered that for sure.

It was when she was she stood in front of her mirror that afternoon, wondering if he’d like that almost golden color on her, inching the hem up her thighs just a little bit, that reality reared up and startled her. It made her breath catch in her throat to realize that he’d seen her in her pajamas, and in yoga pants and old college sweatshirts with holes near the collar. He’d seen her with her mascara trickling black lines down her drunken face. He’d seen her with her nose runny and her hair a mess and her eyes bloodshot (“You’re not well. Go home or I’ll have you delivered there. You’re putting me off my lunch.”), but _none_ of that made it any less important that he liked her in that dress. None of it. Not even a little bit.

It was new, and it was exciting, and it stirred up a whirlpool in her stomach that calmed only when she opened her door that evening to the sight of his worried face attempting to smile. Somehow, the fact that he was obviously faring much, much worse than she was, helped. Made her feel the need to be braver. Bolder. For both of them.

Like now.

“Hey,” she began, pulling her uncomfortable wicker chair a little closer to the table. “You know that first night you called me from Frankfurt?”

The hand in which he held his fork froze above a lone prawn. He shot her a wary look that threatened to make her giggle before she’d even made her move.

“Yes?” he answered, drawing out the word as if to keep her follow-up at bay a little longer.

Belle lowered her voice, leaned closer. “Did you really drop your phone cause of what I said, or were you just trying to be funny?”

Helpless, dumbstruck, _adorable_ , he opened and closed his mouth for words that had no intention of coming out. The look on his face was delicious - better than the prawns. When Belle began to laugh, he did too. But a short burst of it was all he allowed her to savor before he forced his mouth firmly shut. He couldn’t quite manage to stop smiling, however, so he looked down to feign a sudden and intense interest in his food again.

“Spot on,” he grumbled, sarcasm dripping thickly from his voice. “I dropped my nine hundred dollar phone for comedic effect.”

Belle kept laughing, but now she did it quietly, quieter still when she saw that his face had begun to grow a charming shade of firetruck red. Mission accomplished. She sat and grinned in silence then, felt her shoulders shake once or twice with a leftover chuckle, but that was all. She’d struck her blow, and he’d more or less swatted back at her, and that was enough for now.

He peeked up at her just as she was peeking at him. He flashed a shy smile, then looked away again, and Belle wondered where their night would lead when they left this place. And was he thinking about her now? _Thinking_ about her; not just… thinking about her. Had he really thought about her that way before? When they said their goodbyes that night, when he was on his own in his quiet hotel room, did he think about her?

Had he pictured -

“Wanna try my pad thai?” Belle forced herself to ask when her thoughts began to dry up her mouth and made the silence feel too heavy.

“Oh… I… Sure. Thank you.”

She wasn’t very hungry anymore, anyway.

…

When they left the restaurant, they stepped out into a warm, lively Saturday evening as people passed by on bikes, on foot, in cars with the windows down and the radio playing. The sky was a deep blue color, dotted with bright needlepoint stars. Up above the tall buildings, all of that deep blue turned paler and merged with a fading yellow band of light bordering a thin sliver of glowing orange just at the horizon.

They’d left without a plan, and it showed. Arm in arm, they walked slowly, aimlessly, _probably_ towards his parked car about a block away. They were just sort of drifting there, for lack of another destination.

“We could go and watch a movie,” suggested Belle, glancing at him to gauge his reaction. There wasn’t much of one. She was glad. “That’s a pretty typical thing to do on a date, right?” she added, nevertheless.

“We could. Would you like to?”

What Belle really would have liked was to try and hold hands and find out what that felt like with him. She just coiled her arm around his a little tighter than she normally did instead.

“Not really. I’m glad you’re back. Be silly to stare at a giant screen for two hours, now that we finally get to spend some time together.”

He looked down at her then, the breeze blowing his hair into his gently smiling face. The sight, his undivided attention, the warmth of it made her heart glow proudly in her chest.

“I missed you terribly, you know,” he said quietly, turning his smile away, staring into the distance as they walked at their leisurely pace. “During all of these… awful presentations and meetings, I kept thinking: if Belle were here, she’d be getting the hopeless giggles.”

Belle grinned, pictured him not quite managing to keep a straight face in a crowd of very serious men and women, with his arms crossed, his face tilted down a bit so that his hair might hide his smile if he couldn’t help it.

“Lots of horrible business jargon, I bet.”

“Oh, it was torture,” he groaned, and he gave her a pained look that actually did make her giggle. “If I’d taken your advice and turned it into a drinking game, they would have had to send me back home in a coffin.”

She couldn’t help but cringe a bit at his wording. Belle liked his dramatics, his penchant for hyperbole, but his words often imparted some terribly grim mental images, and she wasn’t much of a fan of those.

“Did anyone mention corporate values?”

His full body shudder told her yes before his affirmative nod did. He gripped his cane tighter in his left hand.

“Synergy?” she added, her voice much higher and her head cocked innocently to the side.

He growled, screwed up his face like she’d made him bite into a lemon. “Every twenty minutes, at least. In noun and verb form.”

“Poor you,” she cooed with a chuckle, leaning into him a little bit. “Maybe it’s time for early retirement if you hate it that much.”

There was an unexpected beat of silence, and then he muttered a dry, “Please, spare me the flattery. It’s going straight to my head.”

“Early!” gasped Belle, suddenly horrified by her unintended implications. “I said early! Like, _way_ early!”

The feeling of his chest shaking in deep laughter wasn’t the only thing that stopped her from piling on appeasements. Belle could spot his car in the distance, and when their laughter went, the unknown returned and silenced her. She thought of her unasked question from before and stared at the cracked pavement under their feet for a moment, to wait and see if the urge would ebb again. Two steps. Three. Four.

It didn’t. But she resolved to ask quietly, in compromise.

“Why didn’t you take anything for your flight back?”

He was still smiling when he glanced down at her again, but it was different. It was very much frozen. He let go of her arm very slowly, squeezing her wrist before disentangling himself from her completely. Belle was worried until she realized that he was heading over to a bench in front of a flower shop on the corner of the street. The shop was closed, the flowers safe inside. He sat down, propped his cane up against the shop window and patted the weathered wood in invitation.

He looked very handsome there, if a little overdressed. He would have been perfectly fine without one or two of those layers in this nice weather. He’d worn an undeniably magenta shirt for the occasion, which she liked a lot. Would have made an even better picture if there had still been flowers out. Was this where he’d bought her those incredible roses that would only fit in the champagne bucket he’d left behind in her apartment one drunken night?

“Coming?” he asked, raising his brow.

“Oh!” Belle started, blinking furiously for a moment. “Yeah, sorry.”

She was less worried now, and just confused. She sat down next to him, tugging the hem of her dress down.

“I prefer to take my scoldings seated,” he explained, catching her puzzled look.

“I’ve never scolded you in my life!”

She only realized she was pouting when his eyes drifted down to her lips and he huffed out a soft, breathless laugh. She pressed her lips tight instead, looked a little embarrassed.

“No, you’re right,” he said, folding his hands in his lap, wringing them a little. Nervous. “You’ve never. That was too harsh a word.”

She knew she nagged him on occasion, but only if he was running on no sleep with no signs of stopping, or if she thought he was being needlessly cold and short with people who didn’t deserve it. But that was fair, wasn’t it?

“I’ll try not to, anyway,” she promised.

“I might need you to.”

“Well, go on then.”

Belle smiled at him kindly even when he looked away from her. His dark eyes followed a few passing cars, traveled the darkening sky up above the buildings across from them, glued themselves to his hands. But he did not look at her.

“To some degree,” he began, “I was simply hoping it wouldn’t be necessary. But mainly, I’d gotten a bit upset with myself that week. And in that sense, I thought better of indulging myself on the flight back.”

His words and the way he spoke them made Belle’s brow furrow. He spoke slowly and very evenly to her, as if recounting a vague witness statement to the police for the third or fourth time. He needed translating.

“Not spending an entire intercontinental flight in complete terror doesn’t count as self-indulgence, I don’t think. Why did you want to punish yourself?”

When he looked at her, his eyes flitted all over her face. Belle could practically hear the cogs whirring in his handsome head, struggling to hear his words bounced back at him, only boiled down and simpler.

“Well, that’s… That’s a harsh word, too. But not inaccurate, I’ll admit.”

He looked away again, just in time to see a little white dog straining at its leash to cross the street and give chase to a girl on a skateboard, zooming past.

“I wish I’d stayed here with you, that’s all,” he continued quietly.

But it wasn’t all. And now there was something a little heavy in her stomach that she knew wouldn’t stop growing and writhing until he’d told her more.

“Did something happen over there?” she asked, reaching out to touch the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers. He softened under her touch, sat back a little more comfortably.

“No, love,” he replied, shaking his head, offering a reassuring smile. “Nothing happened.”

“It’s alright that you left. I missed you, but it’s alright. It was planned months ago, I knew that. No reason to put yourself through what you did.”

“But I could have cancelled the whole thing. Planned a load of impossible conference calls over the next few months, maybe -”

“Hey, come on,” she interjected impatiently, giving his hand a squeeze when he began to tense up again. “There’s no way that would have worked. You just said it yourself.”

The breeze blew her hair in her face. She took her hand back to pull it out of her eyes.

“Perhaps not. But it doesn’t matter. None of it matters compared to you, and that’s not even - … Most of all, I hate that I -”

He stopped to swallow, to lick his dry lips. The way his eyes grew dark told Belle that they were approaching the crux of the matter. It made her a little nervous.

“I hate that I was a bit relieved when I left. I felt… like a coward. Taking the valium would have felt like letting myself off the hook.”

Belle shook her head slowly, faintly, to indicate she didn’t understand. There was lots wrong with what he’d just said, and she was beginning to think he was right; he did deserve a scolding for what he’d done to himself for no good reason, but she was stuck on a single word of his confession. Like glue.

“Relieved?” she said, her voice sounding fragile to her own ears.

He angled his body a little more towards her, looked for something in her face with his dark eyes, and sighed softly when he didn’t find it.

“For one incredibly thoughtless moment, yes.”

“Why?”

He made a deep, throaty sound that was half growl and half sigh.

“I figured I couldn’t… ruin what was happening between us while I wasn’t there. I know that’s stupid, Belle. Unbelievably stupid of me. But… But waiting for you to kiss me every weekend, or to bring it up, maybe even end it - it was terrifying.”

Belle’s eyes had grown bigger as he talked in his small, unsure voice. Her lips were parted in surprise and incomprehension, because she remembered his arm around her shoulder that very first night, and his calm words telling her they’d figure it out, and he wasn’t shaking in his boots, then. He was a bit, before they kissed, when she first brought it up and he stuttered and fidgeted so nervously, but not after. Not at all.

“You didn’t seem terrified that night,” she said quietly. “You made me feel like everything was going to be okay.”

It was one thing to make him nervous - one fun, exciting thing - but Belle hated the thought that she might have frightened him. Hated the idea that she wouldn’t have noticed, that she hadn’t picked up on his apprehension, that she might have _pushed_ him that night. It was enough to make her feel vaguely ill, and she hunched her shoulders a bit, looked down at her knees.

“I wasn’t terrified in that moment, Belle. Sweetheart.”

Belle glanced up and caught him looking at her with such fondness in his eyes that she felt better in an instant. “You weren’t?”

“No. I could barely believe - … Well…”

His let out soft laugh, accompanied by a shaky smile.

“What?” she asked, feeling herself begin to smile in response.

“My luck,” he said, a hint of a tremble in his voice. “I just couldn’t believe my luck.”

Her belly knew what he meant before her brain fully understood. With a dry mouth and a storm of butterflies tickling her ribs, she asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I, ah,” he began. But he paused and cleared his throat then, shifted to sit a little straighter, frowned and looked very serious despite the color to his cheeks and his body’s inability to sit perfectly still for longer than a few seconds. “Belle, I-I’ve felt this way about you a bit - … a while longer than you think.”

The fluttering made sense to her now. Her eyes big, her mouth still dry, all Belle could manage to utter in that moment was a soft, subdued, “Oh,” and nothing more. She was quick to put on a smile for him, though. His words were still ringing in her ears and refusing to settle and sink in, but still she knew he needed her to smile.

Not that it did much. He looked terribly sad and worried there, waiting in vain for her to speak. When she didn’t, because she _couldn’t_ , he offered a timid, guilty, “I’m sorry,” that squeezed her heart and woke her up. She scooted closer and let her quick emergency smile grow warm and genuine.

“Don’t apologize. That’s not a bad thing.”

When he turned to look at her properly, their faces were much closer than before. So much room on that bench, yet the pair of them were all bunched up together in a single corner, staring at each other, talking in hushed voices while the world passed them by.

“You don’t feel betrayed?” he asked, looking utterly confused.

“Why would I feel betrayed?”

He knitted his eyebrows together, and his lips moved faintly in a silent stutter for a moment before he found his voice again. “Because I wasn’t feeling what you thought I was. Because I hid it from you.”

“No!” she sighed emphatically. If they hadn’t been sitting so close, she would have cried it out. “I’m… I’m not sure what I'm feeling, but it's good. It’s a good thing.”

“Yeah?”

Belle grinned and gave a tiny nod. “It’s definitely not _betrayal_.”

She didn’t tack on the ‘you sweet, dramatic spaniel,’ that she really wanted to, even though the urge was incredibly strong. But those teasing words were doing quite nicely there in the pit of her belly with the rest of the warm feelings she _couldn’t_ put into words. No need to say them out loud and fluster him even more. For now.

It was getting darker now, but the city was coming alive. More cars, more people walking by, laughter and chatter coming from the Italian restaurant across the street. There was a blast of mandolin music each time the door opened and a couple walked in or out.

“How long?” asked Belle, too curious not to.

He took a moment to answer. “You’re beautiful, Belle, and I haven’t been… immune to that. But this? I’m not sure.”

A tingly warmth crept up her neck at the compliment, at how easily he said them now, compared to his stammered comment about her hair - which she’d only worn down, actually.

“Days? Weeks?”

He sighed and looked up at the darkening sky. “Maybe a month or two. Maybe a little longer.”

“Oh,” said Belle very quietly. Her lips stayed rounded for a moment longer, her brow furrowed as she realized that the moment that sent the warmest shock to the core of her, the moment that made her see him, made her want him, wasn’t the moment she had thought it was. Not for him. Not really.

“How did you know?”

_Did your brain explode when we hugged, like mine did?_

“Oh… It was strange, I… I woke up in the middle of the night, a few months ago, I think. It was two in the morning, something like that. I’d left the door to the balcony open, so it was cold, and I couldn’t get back to sleep right away. I started thinking about that night you stayed over. About you.”

He paused for a moment, and leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs and his hands linked together in his lap.

“And well, I… It struck me how unbelievably easy it was to fall asleep with you there in my bed with me that night. I thought, isn’t it funny how I’ve never gotten quite tired of that wee thing chirping away at me? Isn’t it strange how peaceful I felt with her there next to me when I can barely stand to be in the same room with most people I know?”

Belle was rapt, breathing light as a bird. She drank up his words, didn’t want to miss a single one, even though that was highly unlikely, sitting as close as they were.

“I think that’s when it changed,” he decided, his gentle voice growing quieter, more uncertain and rough rather than the dreamy tone it had been as he told her of his sleepless night. “Or when I realized, or understood, or…” He looked down at the pavement between his feet for a moment. “I don’t know, Belle. And the longer I think about it, the less I - … I just don’t know.”

Belle reached out to tuck his hair behind his ear so she could look at his gorgeous face. At the lines that made him look wise and resilient, at the chameleon brown of his eyes; sometimes bright, sometimes pitch black. His nose strong, his mouth stern and proud - it was a face of angles throwing shadows that would deeply fascinate a painter, or a photographer, or a friend with a sudden crush out of what still felt like nowhere.

“I had no idea,” she said softly, leaning a little closer. She was close enough to kiss his cheek with just the slightest of movements, and close enough to rest her head on his shoulder, too. She did neither.

“For a moment, that night… I thought you did. See right through me, I mean, because you often do. But…”

He gave a small, slow shrug and let his lips smile a fond little smile that made Belle feel very loved all of the sudden. The feeling overwhelmed her, filled her from top to bottom with a warmth that made her think that surely she was about to start glowing like a lightbulb - but it didn’t shake her. Didn’t shock her. Because he was her best friend, and she’d loved him like that for a while, too.

“I’m really glad you told me.”

He didn't always tell her, and Belle didn’t always notice. She still didn’t know about all of the things that made him crawl into himself, and what made him put up all those fronts so skillfully crafted that they could fool her too, but they’d managed so far. They’d managed to leave each other that space and still be close.

“You'll keep telling me things right?”

His silent answer - a nod and a smile that said he'd try - was enough for Belle in that moment.

A straggler on a bike rode past the flower shop at an impressive speed, ringing his bell as he whooshed past. The sudden sound startled them, made them move apart and sit up straight with red faces and goofy grins.

“D’you, uh, d’you own any other houses, by the way?” Belle joked. She crossed one leg over the other.

“Houses? No,” he replied, folding his arms over his chest with half a smirk. “Castles? Maybe.”

When Belle snorted and shoved his arm playfully, he burst out in laughter that made his eyes glint in the warm glow of the streetlight that had just flickered on up above their heads now that the sun had truly set.

And she was getting a little cold. She’d left her jacket in the car, and he’d warned her about that, so she didn’t rub her hands over her arms the way she wanted to. Belle breathed out slow, steady as she could, and managed not to shiver. Why this sudden chill, anyway? Her dress had long sleeves - well, three quarter sleeves, and the fabric wasn’t the thickest, but still.

Maybe it was because they were sitting further apart now. She uncrossed her legs, then crossed them again, this time pointing her legs more towards him in the process. There. Closer again. He was still smiling, maybe at his own joke, following passersby with eyes that looked close to golden in this new light.

“Do you like my dress?” asked Belle shamelessly, missing the warm weight of his appreciative stare.

He looked down at her dress, eyes trailing slowly over the fabric as he gave a nod. “I do.”

She was surprised when he reached out to touch the hem of her dress with a single fingertip. The simple, unpredicted touch thrilled her in a way she hadn’t expected. And so the mood swerved beautifully, without warning, to something a little more like what she felt all those weeks ago when their embrace meant something startlingly different than it did before. And when the side of his thumb made contact with the skin of her thigh - maybe accidentally at first - and lingered there, Belle held her breath, worried that he would pull back. So worried, in fact, and so unaccustomed to waiting and settling for what the universe deigned to give her that she reached out, covered his hand with hers, pressed it down on her thigh, and kept it there. 

Nothing had ever felt better.

His head twitched up, his eyes found hers, and Belle felt her lips part to say something. But it took a few seconds for her to realize what it was she wanted.

“Can we go to your house?”

Under her firm touch, his hand curved to fit the shape of her thigh. “My house?” he said, so softly she could barely hear it over the sound of a passing car.

He didn’t look averse to the idea, just a little unsure as to her meaning. “Yeah. Not your flat.”

“Why there?”

Because, Belle thought to herself as she stroked the back of his hand with her thumb, maybe it was alright to change up the pattern. She’d kissed him in her apartment, and he’d gone home. She’d kissed him in his and she’d done the same. Maybe it’d be easier to stay together if there weren’t any other beds to run off to.

But she couldn’t really form any decent sentences when he looked at her like that, so patient with her, so open. She _did_ try:

“Cause…”

But it didn’t go anywhere, and so she moved in quick to kiss him hard like a nervous teenager at the end of an awkward date. His hand left her thigh and bared it to the evening breeze, but it found her cheek instead in a gentle gesture that melted her completely. He returned her kiss properly, made it into something a lot less clumsy. And when he pulled away, he kept his hand on her cheek.

“Yeah, alright. Anywhere you like.”

When Belle got up - too eagerly, judging from the little smile he thought she couldn’t spot out of the corner of her eye - she noticed his cane propped up against the shop window. She handed it to him, and felt a tingle in her belly when their hands brushed in the process.

“Thank you.”

“Corner shop first, maybe? There’s no - …” _Condoms,_ thought Belle, and her heart was suddenly in her throat. “I mean, there’s no food or drinks or anything in the house.”

“Oh? You didn’t leave any?” he asked, offering her his arm before they began to walk.

Belle snaked her arm tight around his and with her chin tilted up a bit, claimed, “I clean up after myself!”

“Then why did I find half a banana and a single pudding cup in my refrigerator last time?”

“I left you a snack, you ungrateful jerk!”

…

The little corner store they found themselves in was only a two minute walk away from where he’d parked the car. The walls were white, the shelves chockfull of overpriced stuff, and fluorescent lights hummed overhead to make a harsh contrast with the twilight sky and the orange glow of the streetlights outside.

They let go of each other’s arms and each wandered off into a different aisle, smiling temporary goodbyes. Belle carried the basket, because the unspoken agreement was that she would decide on the contents, for the most part. Like chips that she hoped they wouldn’t get around to eating tonight. Orange juice to go with breakfast, and breakfast itself: the most garishly colored box of cereal she could find, just to watch him make a face when he noticed it.

And then, a slightly more delicate matter. The condoms weren’t kept behind the counter, which was a good thing. That was one awkward moment skipped, right there. But she’d found them in the back of the store - loads, actually - and she realized with a whispered, “Bugger,” that she was absolutely not the right person to make that decision. She’d never _had_ to.

Just then, she saw him pass at the end of the aisle, there and gone again before she could blink.

“Hey, come back here for a sec!” she called out.

She heard the tap of his cane come towards her again, and he joined her with a smile that told Belle he probably hadn’t noticed where they were standing. She tried not to laugh as she gave his shoulder a little push, maneuvering him to quite literally face the matter at hand. She watched him closely, waiting for the penny to drop. When it did, his confused smile fell, and he looked back at her with a helpless look that she’d more or less expected.

“Oh.”

“Oh?” Belle repeated.

“You’re… sure?”

“Unless you don’t -”

“No! No, I didn’t mean -”

She hadn’t meant it to tease, but now Belle couldn’t help but giggle at his wide-eyed exclamation. He snapped his mouth shut and pressed his lips together tight to fight a flustered grin, but it didn’t help much.

“It’s alright if you did mean it like that,” said Belle, catching herself too late, as per usual. While she was busy nearly shoving his hand up her dress on the corner of a busy street, and putting breakfast items in the shopping basket, and directing him towards the condoms without really ever _asking_ , he was being sensible and refusing to presume.

“I don’t. I didn’t… mean it like that,” he said with a drier voice, his eyes drifting down to her lips as he spoke. “I was just asking. Making sure.”

Belle felt her cheeks grow warmer, her heart beat faster. “Well, I want to try. Do you?”

“Yes! Of course I do, I just - You’re _truly_ sure?”

_“Yes!”_

He didn’t know, because she’d never told him, but he always made a certain face when he was doubtful, or skeptical. He was making it now, with his eyes a little smaller and just a tiny sliver of pink from his tongue peeking out between his lips. The sight was distracting, but not as distracting as Belle was starting to get impatient.

“Come on, you can stop asking,” she cooed before he could ask her again, the corners of her mouth twitching up into a mischievous grin. “It’s not that big a jump. I’ve had my tongue in your mouth.”

For one extremely silly moment, his eyes went big again while the tip of his tongue was still out. Then the tension broke, and he exploded in sputtering laughter that set her off, too.

“And I liked it!” she added, struggling to get the words out between the laughter.

With wet eyes glinting with mirth, he grinned and shook his head his head up at the fluorescent lights as if he thought them witnesses to his terrible ordeal. But as he did so, he stepped closer, and before Belle knew it, she was being kissed. Not once, but twice. Her eyes fluttered shut, and she felt his hair brush her cheek as he put a finger under her chin and tilted her head up a little bit for the second kiss, and oh, being his ordeal was a wonderful thing.

Her eyes stayed shut when he pulled away. Belle was still floating, and her lips were still tingling, and the only thing that snapped her out of it was the _thump_ of something falling into her basket.

She opened her eyes, and saw him walking off towards the dairy section. For milk, probably, if he’d noticed the cereal. In her basket, a new addition. Nothing remarkable about the condoms, but _what if_ , Belle thought to herself with a smug little smirk.

“Strawberry flavored?” she called out after him, feigning mild disgust.

A slightly panicked voice called back, “What?”

Belle would have giggled if she hadn’t bitten down on her tongue to prevent just that. His shoes squeaked on the tiled floor and his cane tapped a little faster, and there he was again, appearing at the end of the aisle with wide eyes. And a carton of milk.

“Belle, I didn’t -”

She flashed a grin that was devilish in its innocence, and when his shoulders fell and he made a sound that was a cross between a gasp and a laugh, she knew he’d caught on.

“That was genius, actually,” he admitted with an embarrassed chuckle and just a hint of pride that made Belle glow. “You’re killing me, but that was genius.”

“You’re perfectly capable of killing me right back,” she teased, hugging the basket to her chest as she walked towards him. “Why don’t you?”

“Because I’m bloody besotted with you,” he answered in a deep mumble. “It’s hard to concentrate.”

 _Besotted_. What a lovely word. Stood in front of him now, Belle rose on her toes and kissed the corner of his mouth. “If I can do it, so can you.”

“Mm.” He put the carton of milk in her basket. “I’m buying you a mirror for your birthday.”

…

Belle had never been in that pink house with him before. She’d only seen the ghost of him there; his abandoned wool winter coat on the coat stand, his umbrella behind the door, a doodle on a little notepad, a bottle of champagne and a bag of candy just for her. She’d always suspected that he would make more sense in here than he did in his fancy apartment so far up above the rest of the world, and he hadn’t proven her wrong so far. He dropped his keys on the little telephone table and draped his suit jacket carelessly over the staircase banister. He looked like a man coming home.

She followed him into the kitchen and kept observing him as he put away the juice and the milk in the fridge. It was a clean white thing with rounded corners and a little aluminum logo in a very retro font. She took in the scene and compared it to the ones she had of him grabbing a bottle of white wine from his giant double doored stainless steel fridge. Both worked, but she liked this one a little better. The light was warmer in this one.

“You didn’t drink your champagne,” he remarked.

Belle slipped in between him and the refrigerator door when he closed it, wasting no time in looping her arms around his neck in a series of smooth, feline movements. His hair tickled her bare wrists.

“I didn’t.”

His hands were warm and heavy on her hips. He pulled her a little bit closer and brought their bodies together; and when the same feeling, the same heat from all those weeks ago surged up from the pit of her belly and radiated out into every part of her, she didn’t startle. Didn’t step back and frighten herself into feeling something more familiar instead. Not this time. This time, she kissed him.

He responded with a tighter grip on her hips and soft little sound in his throat that made her want to get closer to him. She stepped back to stand against the fridge and pulled him along, immediately regretting her decision when the cold seeped through the thin fabric of her dress in a nanosecond. She broke the kiss with a small yelp.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his lips still close to hers.

“Fridge’s cold,” she breathed in a shiver.

He slid his hands up her back the very second the words left her mouth, pulling her away from his fridge and guiding her back against the kitchen counter instead. _Brilliant_ idea, thought Belle, as she grabbed the edge of the counter and tried to hoist herself up.

“Your dress!” he protested, looking genuinely concerned.

Belle screwed up her face but let herself slip down from the counter. “I _did_ clean before I left.” He inclined his head and raised a single doubtful eyebrow, prompting her to gasp a fond, “Oh my God, give me a break!”

“I didn’t say a-”

“Shall I just take it off right now, then?” she asked, giving him a gentle, playful push right in the center of his chest.

It was but a weak little shove, but he let it push him back, and he swayed forth again to let his head fall down to her shoulder with a soft laugh. He hid his boyishly flustered face, but when he brushed his lips faintly against her neck to leave a kiss, Belle didn’t mind anymore. Not at all. Wanting to feel him closer again, she slid her arms around his waist, tighter and tighter.

They stood and kissed for a while that way, for long, slow minutes - interrupted once when the feel of his tongue brushing against hers made her think of her own joke back in the corner shop, and she broke the kiss in laughter. He was very sweet and understanding about it, letting her laugh on his shoulder for a while, but then it happened again a second time, when she’d pulled his tie off him and had begun to fiddle with the top button of his shirt. It was the fact that his lips had found that ticklish spot under her ear that made her break and giggle, but she only understood what she was really laughing about when he asked her.

“What’s so hilarious now, then?” he asked her fondly, his eyes dragging up from her lips to her eyes.

“It’s nothing. It’s silly,” laughed Belle, focusing on her fingers as they undid another button on his shirt. “I’ve just never even pictured you naked before, and now I’m undressing you.”

She _felt_ his laugh more than she heard it, his body rumbling gently against hers. “Don’t start now,” he mumbled, pulling her hair gingerly over her shoulder. “You’ll only set your wee self up for disappointment.”

“I like it when you use that word.”

“Disappointment?” he asked dryly.

“Stop making me laugh!”

“You’re making yourself laugh.”

“You’re laughing too!”

“You’re setting me off,” he argued, grinning down at her as he pulled her close to her chest. “You always set me off.”

“Make me stop, then.”

He flashed her a meaningful look that caught her by surprise. She stopped laughing long enough for him to capture her lips and make her melt into him.

It only took about half a minute of being kissed nearly senseless for the image of his panicked face when he thought he’d picked the wrong condoms to sneakily surface and drift in front of her mind’s eye, however.

She began to grin against his mouth - but it absolutely stopped being funny somewhere in between the sudden presence of his erection against her thigh and his cool hand slipping in between her legs and up her dress with a boldness she hadn’t expected, but soon realized she’d been starving for.

“Bedroom,” she gasped out weakly, fisting the fabric of his shirt.

Up the creaky stairs, holding hands and not speaking a single word. He closed the bedroom door behind them and stood a little lost in their silence, watching her with dark eyes, barely moving in his sudden shyness. As before, it only made Belle want to be bolder. She clicked the dim bedside lamp on, then reached for the zip at the back of her dress and pulled it down, smiling at him with a little tremble in her lips.

“Belle…”

It was cool up there in his bedroom. Her dress hit the floor with a rustling sound. She stepped out of it as he came towards her, kicked off her heels, and wasn’t cold anymore when his arms wrapped themselves around her and his face was buried in the crook of her neck. How they ended up on the bed without letting go of one another or falling flat on their faces, Belle would never figure out, but she had him where she wanted now; warming her body on top of cool sheets, letting her take off his shirt without even the littlest self-deprecating joke, getting rid of her bra surprisingly smoothly while kissing the newly exposed skin and leaving goosebumps with ghosting fingertips.

It wasn’t funny. It was perfect. And the trick, she knew, was to keep kissing, to keep touching. With her teeth nipping his bottom lip, Belle sent his belt flying across the room so she could slide her hand down his boxers and make him gasp into her mouth. His hand between her thighs was inspiring noises she couldn’t remember making before. He drew the sheets up over their shoulders at some point, rubbed his hands over her arms to heat them. She hadn’t told him she’d been a little cold all night. He just knew.

It felt right to have him there between her thighs, inside of her, her arms tight around his neck and her legs even tighter around his waist. She'd forgotten that the bed was a little squeaky. What they were doing in it wasn’t helping much - and that _was_ a little bit funny, but they shared that thought with a pair of matching grins and then went right back to kissing and fucking with her fingers tangled in his hair and his fingers in between their bodies to pull her over the edge and make her come so hard she couldn’t even make a sound.

“Alright?” he asked breathlessly, moving slower now, brushing her hair out of her face.

“Brilliant,” she replied with a lazy grin. She cupped his cheek in her hand. “You?”

No-one had ever looked at her the way he did. The wonder and promises and adoration in his eyes made her heart feel so full she was worried it might burst. With a whispered, “C’mere,” Belle pulled him back down in her embrace before her heart gave. She kissed his shoulder and neck until he came.

And then things were very peaceful. Just the sound of their breathing and the wind making the leaves on the maple tree outside his bedroom window dance. When he lifted his weight from her body, Belle followed his warmth because she missed it, and nestled herself in the crook of his arm with her head on his shoulder. She felt like a giant, sated cat, which made him conquered prey, she supposed, or a sun-warmed spot on the windowsill. Maybe an electric blanket. She wasn’t budging, in any case, and she was very close to purring, too.

“I feel like a really happy cat,” were the words she used to break the silence, deciding that there was no reason to keep that thought to herself.

He laughed softly, and the shaky movement of his chest made her laugh too. “That’s unfortunate. No pets, you’ll find it says in the house rules.”

“What house rules, you giant nerd?” she giggled, poking him in the chest.

“Out of the window you go!” he groaned, making as if to lift her.

Belle squirmed and giggled a high-pitched, “No!” but he was just moving her about a little bit now, laughing at the sounds she was making.

“What are you squirming about? You’ll land on your wee feet, beastie.”

“I can’t remember how many lives I’ve used up!”

“Oh, alright then,” he sighed with mock exasperation, loosening his grip on her and letting her curl right back up against him with a massive victorious grin.

Whispering maple tree leaves, their breathing still slowing, and if she put her ear against his chest just so: his heartbeat.

“Keep telling you things, was it?” he asked, his voice rumbling pleasantly in his chest.

Belle perked up like the cat she fancied herself to be in that blissful moment and gave an eager nod. She couldn’t look at him properly the way she lay there on his chest, so she moved off of him, lay on her side instead, and was happy to see him do the same. This way of being close was nice, too. Especially if he kept running his hand slowly up and down the side of her body like that.

“Have you gone snooping in the attic?”

“Course I have,” said Belle with a cheeky grin that froze and faded when she realized he might finally tell her why on earth there was an entire upscale flea market up there. “Tell me!”

“Well, it’s… It’s just some things I’ve collected over the years. Not so much recently, though. It’s been sitting there for a while, and it… It could be a sort of retirement plan.”

Belle raised her brow. “You need one at this point?”

“No, no,” he chuckled. “No. Not financially. More as a way to keep busy. I’d sell it all.”

“What, like on eBay?”

He gave a faint, patient smile. “No. Have you explored the town yet?”

“Yeah, a bit. I’ve been down to the harbor and stuff.”

“Do you like it here?”

“Yeah! It’s quiet, but kind of cute. Why?”

A shrug and that same patient smile was all the answer she got.

“What does that have to do with your dragon’s hoard up in the attic, anyway?”

He snorted at her phrasing, and her chest swelled with pride. She loved making him laugh.

“Maybe it’s a ridiculous idea,” he said softly, looking down at her lips for a moment, “but I’ve been thinking of buying a little shop here. Quite near the library, in fact, and I’d…”

Those softly spoken words were all it took for her eyes grew big with dreamy images of him standing behind a brass till, surrounded by all of the things he’d been gathering and storing away in his nest like a giant magpie, counting the money in the till as dust danced in the golden afternoon light.

“An antiques shop!” Belle gasped.

“Or a pawn shop.”

It was perfect. _He_ was perfect, and it was utterly adorable how pleased he seemed with her reaction.

“Not ridiculous. Perfect,” she said with a decided nod.

He let his fragile boyish smile grow bigger. “Yeah?”

“Mhm. I mean, I’d like to see you try to keep civil after a long day of dealing with customers, but yes. Definitely yes.”

Was that why he wanted her to like this strangely comforting sleepy town she’d spent so few nights in? As she lay there and soaked up his sweet smile, Belle thought about what it could mean if it was, and every single option only made her heart glow warmer.

“It suits you,” she said.

“Does it? How do you know?”

“I just do. I can feel it.”

He made more sense surrounded by the things he loved. He made more sense in this house he’d told her he couldn’t stand to be alone in because that wasn’t what he’d bought it for, one drunken night of sincere, heartfelt conversation on her living room floor. He made more sense here with her.

“But I’m not gonna lose my lunch buddy so soon, right?”

“Course not,” he mumbled with an exaggerated frown, guiding her to nestle under his chin with a warm hand at the back of her head. “Can’t have you working through your lunch break like a pariah. You’d get crumbs in the keyboard.”

“Too late for that,” Belle murmured sleepily against his neck. “Maybe if you hadn’t played hard to get in that elevator for ages.”

…

On a sunny Monday morning, two people - one of them smiling, the other not even remotely - shook their heads at a small group of people holding the elevator doors for them. They were waiting for another elevator to arrive empty, and when it did, they went inside with linked hands.

The doors opened on the 39th floor, but no-one came out. They opened again on the 41st floor, then closed again, then opened again for a smirking man to walk out backwards, leaving only a blushing woman with bright blue eyes and a beaming grin inside.

When the doors closed, she fixed her tousled hair with one hand and pressed the button labeled 39 with the other.


End file.
